


Kill Some Time

by cosmicmewtwo, Vakaara



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: AU: Planet Vegeta Still Exists, M/M, kakavege week prompt: Meeting at the Bar/Club, tumblr: kakavegeweek
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-02-26 16:37:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 38,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13239765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicmewtwo/pseuds/cosmicmewtwo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vakaara/pseuds/Vakaara
Summary: Prince Vegeta poses as a commoner to blend in at a bar, but one third-class soldier isn't falling for it. As they draw closer together, both are too stubborn to accept the continued slow demise of their race at Frieza’s hands. When an opportunity to save their world presents itself, they will go to any lengths to seize it.





	1. Chapter 1

The Root might have been the most unremarkable dive bar that Prince Vegeta had ever seen—nestled in a damp basement off some alley in the Capital’s industrial sector, it was ugly and uninviting in every way imaginable. But the music was acceptable and the drinks were good—unexpectedly so.

But most importantly: the crowded lower-class watering hole was the last place anyone would expect to find the Prince of all Saiyans.

Vegeta hung back close to the end of the bar, leaning against the stone wall as he nursed his drink, surveying the patrons before him. Most were crowded near the venue’s makeshift stage, dancing and grinding to the beat of the song playing. Some were seated at the bar, some half-falling off their stools, far deeper into their bottles than Vegeta was. In one dark corner, a few Saiyans were hollering over the dull bass of the music as two men broke into a fight.

Vegeta raised his drink to his lips, savouring the spirit as it burned down his throat. He allowed his gaze to wander lazily over the crowd, his attention drawn to a few patrons in particular: A woman near the stage, with wild hair and a crooked tail, who danced with the fierce, hypnotic movements of a warrior in combat; an auburn man at the bar, with dark eyes and a scarred face, whose voice was rich and deep as he spoke low with the barkeep; even the barkeep herself held a certain rough-edged allure. Vegeta swirled his cup in his hand, considering the options before him, planning possible angles of approach—

An unfamiliar voice cut into his thoughts.

“Man, what’s a prince like you doin’ in a place like this?”

Vegeta’s gaze snapped to the side, looking to the man who had suddenly taken up the space next to him. He was taller than Vegeta, and maybe a few years younger, with hair that fell in dark, disheveled spikes. He leaned against the wall with an effortless nonchalance, his lips pulled into a wide smile that annoyed Vegeta almost immediately.

“Excuse me?” Vegeta said, glaring from behind the lip of his glass.

Vegeta’s disguise was subtle, designed to draw as little attention as possible—he wore a battle-worn set of third-class armor, had shed his sleek, ruby scouter for a bulkier, older model, and had pulled a few strands of his hair down to hide his other eye behind makeshift bangs. Aside from the rare second glance, the look had never drawn any suspicion before.

“You might be fooling everyone else here, but I see what you’re doing,” the man chuckled before leaning in closer, flashing a conspiratorial grin. “You’re Prince Vegeta, right?”

An electric sting of panic surged through Vegeta. In all the times he had done something like this, he had never been recognized before—without his gleaming, royal armor and his usual cadre of guards, no one had ever suspected his true identity.

Vegeta’s heart raced, but he tried to keep his hand steady as he took another swig of his drink. “What makes you think I’m Prince Vegeta?”

“You kidding me? I’d recognize that stick-up-your-ass scowl anywhere.” Vegeta nearly choked on his drink, but the man continued. “Don’t worry though, I’m not gonna make a scene.” The man winked. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

“A mouth like that could get a man killed, you know,” Vegeta hissed, before gulping down the last of his drink and moving to set his empty glass down on the end of the bar. “Executed, even.”

The man laughed, an easy, lighthearted sound that seemed out of place coming from a muscle-bound warrior.

“Well, I’ve managed to survive this long,” he shrugged. “So tell me, what’s your drink?”

Despite himself, Vegeta considered the offer.

“Moonspirits,” Vegeta growled. “Neat.”

“Ooh, top-shelf stuff.” He leaned away from the wall and caught the eye of the barkeep, raising two fingers. “Hey, Fitledd, get me another round for my friend here—and some ale for me, eh?”

The woman behind the bar rose an eyebrow, but quickly went to work pouring their drinks.

“Here you go, boys,” she said, handing the drinks down to them with a knowing smile. “On your tab, Kakarot?”

Kakarot nodded, and a flicker of recognition suddenly bubbled up from some dim corner of Vegeta’s memory.

“Kakarot?” he said. “You—are you Raditz’s brother?”

Kakarot laughed again, and Vegeta found himself almost enjoying the sound.

“Oh, shit, you _would_ know him, huh?” Kakarot said. “That cocky son-of-a-bitch has been insufferable since he got promoted to the Royal Guard.”

Vegeta made a hum of agreement as he took a sip from his new drink. “Tell me about it. That "cocky son-of-a-bitch” was just assigned to my squad.“

Kakarot threw his head back, his laughter rolling from him in warm, hearty waves.

"Oh, fuck, that’s rough,” he said between chokes of laughter, and slapped Vegeta on the back; Vegeta nearly startled at the contact. “I don’t envy you, bud.”

“Hmm,” Vegeta said, trying to hide his amusement behind his glass. He watched Kakarot take a drink from his mug, finding himself drawn to the shape of Kakarot’s mouth on the glass, the way his throat bobbed as he swallowed. Vegeta’s drink felt hot in his throat.

“So tell me,” Kakarot said, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “You never answered my original question—what brought someone like you to a place like this?”

Vegeta ran a gloved finger around the rim of his glass as he looked down into his drink. He could feel Kakarot’s eyes burning into him.

“I’m in between missions at the moment,” Vegeta said. “My last one was particularly… brutal. I’m just looking to blow off steam, and the Palace is the worst place for that.”

“Oh?” said Kakarot. Vegeta bit down on his lip as Kakarot leaned in closer. “Where were you last stationed, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Rixshing system,” Vegeta muttered, the name burning his tongue worse than the liquor.

“Oh, fuck, you’re not kidding,” Kakarot said. “That system’s a total hellhole—I lost two good squadmates there, couple rotations ago. You must’ve pissed off Frieza personally to get an assignment there.”

Vegeta took a deep drink from his glass. “You have no fucking idea.”

“Have Frieza’s men ever caught you pulling something like this?” Kakarot teased, his gaze flicking in the direction of the crowded bar. His voice had dropped lower, like he were sharing a secret. “Going incognito and fraternizing with the commoners, I mean?”

“Frieza’s men wouldn’t care,” Vegeta said, swirling his drink in his hand. “Now, the King on the other hand…”

“Ah, I get it,” Kakarot chuckled around the lip of his mug of ale. “Daddy wouldn’t be happy about Junior being out past curfew?”

Vegeta smirked. Before he could stop himself, he had leaned in closer to Kakarot until their arms brushed each other.

“Careful,” he warned, but his grin remained. “Words like that could be considered treasonous in some circles.”

Kakarot licked his lips, and Vegeta felt his body stiffen as Kakarot’s hand suddenly travelled across his back, moving to rest on Vegeta’s hip.

“Always looking to expand my rap sheet,” Kakarot said, his mouth suddenly so close that Vegeta could feel his breath against the shell of his ear. “Tell me, would this be considered treason?” he went on, his voice dropping to a lower, darker tone that made Vegeta shiver in his grip. His lips brushed against the skin of Vegeta’s ear this time, and Vegeta nearly dropped his drink at the sensation. “A third-class like me, touching the Prince like this? Violating the sanctity of the Crown, maybe?”

“You’ll have to go a little farther than this, I’m afraid,” Vegeta challenged, struggling to keep his voice even as Kakarot’s hand felt along the side of his body.

“Then let’s get out of here,” Kakarot said, his voice rumbling with a flirtatious growl. Vegeta’s breath hitched as he felt Kakarot’s tail brush against his thigh. “I can show you how treasonous I can be.”

“I…” Vegeta hesitated. His entire body thrummed under Kakarot’s touch—this was exactly what he had come here looking for, but no one had ever approached him like this, with full knowledge of who he was—

“Here,” Kakarot said, suddenly plucking Vegeta’s scouter off his head, and Vegeta grabbed at his ear, making a noise of protest. “That’s awfully bold of me, putting you on the spot like that.” Vegeta rose an eyebrow as Kakarot quickly tapped something into his scouter. “Here’s the direct line to my scouter. You’re ever around here again, between missions, you give me a call, eh?”

Vegeta opened his mouth to say something, but Kakarot had already slid the scouter back onto Vegeta’s head, giving him another wink.

“It’s been a pleasure, Prince Vegeta,” Kakarot chuckled, and before Vegeta could react, Kakarot pulled away, melting back into the crowd.

Vegeta’s mouth was left hanging open as he watched Kakarot’s back moving away, his form partially obscured by the digits blinking across the glass of Vegeta’s scouter. Kakarot’s number. Vegeta wasn’t sure whether to feel offended or flattered by the gesture—all he was certain of was that his skin still burned where Kakarot had touched him.

Vegeta pounded back the rest of his drink, and followed in Kakarot’s wake.

 


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

 

 

Vegeta spilled out of the club, rushing into the alley outside as he struggled to keep Kakarot in his sight. At first he thought he was too late, that Kakarot had already taken off—but then he caught the sight of Kakarot’s back just as he was turning out of the alley onto the dark street beyond.

“Kakarot!” Vegeta shouted, and Kakarot stopped mid-step, turning to see who had called out to him. His eyes widened in surprise as a wide grin spread across his face.

“Hey, soldier,” he chuckled, his tail flicking lazily behind him. “Looking for someone to fly you home?”

“Oh, _now_ you’re coy,” Vegeta snapped as he approached Kakarot. “Are you normally this much of a tease?”

Kakarot smirked as he began to walk away again. “I guess you’ll just have to follow me home and find out.”

Vegeta tried not to seem too eager as he fell into step beside Kakarot.

“It’s not far,” Kakarot said, and Vegeta rose an eyebrow when Kakarot's arm fell across Vegeta’s shoulders. “Just a couple blocks.”

Kakarot wasn’t lying; they reached his building in minutes on foot, and Vegeta followed behind as Kakarot led him up a dirty, dimly-lit stairwell, and then down a cramped corridor lined with apartment doors.

“It’s not much,” Kakakarot shrugged as he came to a stop in front of what was presumably his own apartment, looking away as he keyed open the door. “I spend most of my time offworld—I don’t usually find myself entertaining royalty in the middle of the night.”

Kakarot held open the door with the flat of his palm, flashing a smirk at Vegeta. “After you, your Highness.”

Vegeta snapped a quick glare at him before stepping inside. Kakarot followed closely behind before shutting the door behind them. The apartment was small and bare—a single room, dimly lit by the stars and streetlights glowing in through a single bank of windows. Vegeta felt immediately out of place.

He moved to take a seat on the apartment’s only sofa as Kakarot ducked into the kitchenette.

“You wanna nightcap?” Kakarot called over his shoulder as he pulled open the door to his fridge.

Vegeta toed off his boots and pulled off his scouter, tossing it onto the mismatched coffee table in front of him.

“Sure,” he shrugged, though he didn’t feel particularly thirsty.

Vegeta heard a rattling as Kakarot pulled two bottles out of his fridge before bumping the door closed with his hip. The bottles hissed as Kakarot flipped off the caps.

“Here you go, your Highness,” he said as he came toward Vegeta, offering one of the open bottles

“Stop calling me that,” Vegeta muttered as he took the offered beer from Kakarot’s hand.

Kakarot laughed before he took a sip from his own drink. “All right, all right—what do you prefer?”

“Vegeta will be fine.”

“Works for me,” Kakarot replied, taking another swig from his drink before setting it down on the table in front of Vegeta. Vegeta watched as he moved toward the bed and sat down at the foot of it, kicking his boots off to the floor and pulling off his scouter. Then he reached up to unclasp the shoulder straps of his armor and shrug out of his breastplate, dropping that to the floor, as well. He wore nothing underneath, and even in the darkness of the apartment, Vegeta could see the outline of his form, the muscles that rippled beneath his chest and abdomen.

Despite the cold beer on his tongue, Vegeta’s mouth felt painfully dry.

“Did you mean what you said? Back at the Root?” Vegeta asked, clearing his throat.

“About what?” Kakarot asked, rubbing a hand behind his neck as he rolled his head back and forth, stretching his muscles.

Vegeta looked down at his bottle, distracting himself by peeling the edges of the label off.

“That my secret was safe with you,” Vegeta said. “I mean it, if you tell anyone about this, about who I am—”

“Don’t sweat it,” Kakarot laughed. “Of course I won’t say anything.” He leaned back slightly, his palms sinking into the mattress. Vegeta’s gaze was drawn immediately to the hard muscle that ridged across his abdomen and dipped invitingly just below the waistband of his leggings. Vegeta quickly felt an uncomfortable heat prickling up his neck and across his face.

Kakarot caught Vegeta’s gaze and smirked.

“I promise I never kiss and tell,” he said, his voice dropping to that same, low growl that had made Vegeta shiver back at the bar.

It had the same effect now.

Vegeta set his bottle down, having lost all interest in his drink. He stood up from the couch and moved through the shadows of the apartment until he stood just inches before Kakarot.

Kakarot bit down on his lip as he looked up at Vegeta.

“Need some help with that armor?”

He didn’t, but Vegeta wanted nothing more than to feel Kakarot’s hands on him again—so he gave a short nod.

Kakarot’s hands reached for Vegeta’s waist first, pulling Vegeta closer until he was in the space between Kakarot’s legs. His fingers made short work of the clasps on Vegeta’s shoulders, pulling Vegeta’s armor off to drop it to the ground with his his own. Vegeta’s skin was bare under the armor, just as Kakarot’s had been, and Kakarot sucked in a quick, sharp breath at the sight before him.

“Mmm,” he said, and Vegeta’s tail curled and uncurled behind him as Kakarot’s hands rubbed down the sides of his body, his thumbs playing across the scars that cut across Vegeta’s skin. “Shame to hide all this under armor.”

Vegeta felt more than naked under Kakarot’s gaze, stripped bare of more than just his armor, and he shivered under Kakarot’s touch. Without thinking, Vegeta reached down, his fingers brushing the waistline of Kakarot’s pants, but Kakarot stopped him, grabbing him by the wrists.

“Ah-ah,” Kakarot scolded. “No need to rush.”

Vegeta growled under his breath. “You really are a fucking tease.”

Kakarot only chuckled as he began to pull Vegeta’s gloves off. Vegeta resisted the impulse to pull his hands away—he preferred to keep his gloves _on_ —but then suddenly Kakarot was pressing his lips against Vegeta’s bare palm, then taking Vegeta’s thumb into his mouth, teeth and tongue scraping his skin—

“Fuck,” Vegeta hissed, and before his legs could give out beneath him, he tugged his hands out of Kakarot’s grip and pulled himself onto the mattress to straddle Kakarot’s lap. Kakarot let out a noise of surprise, but it was silenced beneath Vegeta’s mouth, pressed hot and rough against Kakarot’s lips.

Kakarot’s tongue pushed against Vegeta's, but Vegeta barely had a moment to taste him before Kakarot pulled away, his mouth teasing at Vegeta’s neck instead, bruising his throat with his lips.

Vegeta gasped, burying his hands into Kakarot’s messy hair as he ground his hips against Kakarot’s. Vegeta snarled in satisfaction to discover that Kakarot was already getting hard for him, which only made Vegeta rut against him more insistently.

“Fucking impatient, aren’t you?” Kakarot growled, and Vegeta moaned as Kakarot’s hands ran roughly down his back until they were cupping Vegeta’s ass. Vegeta’s tail whipped around, wrapping itself around one of Kakarot’s wrists, and Kakarot tortured him further by dragging his mouth across Vegeta’s chest, catching a nipple in his teeth.

“Fuck me,” Vegeta demanded, bucking harder against Kakarot’s hips. His cock throbbed as he desperately tried to find some measure of friction, but he was left aching, so consumed with want that he was already wet and leaking through the front of his pants.

“How do you want it?” Kakarot said, his hands dragging down the backs of Vegeta’s thighs, somehow pulling him even closer.

“Don’t care,” Vegeta panted, barely able to force out his words. His whole body felt hot and slick, his skin burning with fever everywhere Kakarot touched him. He was so used to taking the lead—he had never been overcome by someone so brash, so cocksure—he didn’t know what he wanted only that he needed it immediately. “ _Just fuck me already_.”

Kakarot didn’t need to be told twice, and Vegeta suddenly felt the breath knocked out of him as Kakarot flipped him onto the bed, his back hitting the mattress. Vegeta didn’t have a chance to react before Kakarot’s hands were digging into his waistband, pulling his pants down far enough to free Vegeta’s aching cock.

Kakarot’s hand quickly wrapped around him, and Vegeta bucked instinctively into his fist, a strangled moan spilling from his throat before he could stop himself.

“Gods, how long has it been since someone’s fucked you properly?” Kakarot taunted, pumping Vegeta harder with each word until Vegeta was writhing and gasping beneath him. “It’s not gonna be any fun if you cum in my hand—”

“Fuck you,” Vegeta managed to snap in between breathless gasps, and Kakarot laughed.

“I’m trying,” he said, and smirked down at Vegeta before pulling his hand away.

Vegeta bit down on his lip, trying not to groan at the loss. He propped himself up on his arms, just enough so that he could watch as Kakarot peeled Vegeta’s pants all the way off. Vegeta watched eagerly as Kakarot then slid off the bed to slip his own pants off.

Vegeta’s eyes were drawn immediately to Kakarot’s cock. It was even thicker than he had hoped, and his mouth salivated just at the sight of it. But Kakarot was already turned away, rummaging through the mess on the bed’s nightstand before finally finding a bottle and flipping it open. Vegeta watched as Kakarot squeezed the lube into his palm and began to slick his shaft with it; Vegeta only wished that he had had a chance to taste him first.

Kakarot crawled back onto the bed, the mattress dipping with his weight as he moved toward Vegeta. Vegeta spread his legs, ready for him, but then Kakarot’s hands were on his body again, abruptly flipping him onto his stomach.

Vegeta snarled in surprise, pushing himself onto his hands and knees as he cast a glare over his shoulder. “Hey, what do you—”

Then suddenly, an exquisite burst of pain throbbed from the base of his tail and up the length of his spine, then pulsed back down until he felt it all the way to the tip of his cock. Kakarot’s hand had curled into a fist around his tail, and _pulled_.

Vegeta cried out, falling onto his stomach, but Kakarot didn’t relent. Vegeta howled into a pillow as he writhed in Kakarot's grip, Kakarot’s fingers sliding up and down through the fur of Vegeta’s tail. It wasn’t until Vegeta felt Kakarot’s cock pressing into him, slick and hard as diamond, that Kakarot’s grip finally began to loosen.

Kakarot grunted as he began to breach into Vegeta, eventually pushing into him with a deep, rumbling moan.

“Vegeta,” he breathed, and Vegeta quivered at the sound of his name, each syllable spoken with raw, aching _need._ Kakarot’s thrusts were slow at first, driving deep enough each time to force strangled noises from Vegeta’s throat, every moan muffled by the pillow clenched beneath his teeth. But then Vegeta felt Kakarot’s body lean over him, his stomach flush with Vegeta’s back, and one of his arms circled around Vegeta’s neck until the inside of his elbow was crushing  Vegeta’s throat.

“Kakarot,” Vegeta spluttered, barely able to speak against the chokehold. “ _Harder_.”

Kakarot’s grip around his neck tightened and he thrust into Vegeta harder, his breath panting fast and hot against Vegeta’s ear. Every few thrusts he gave a sharp tug on Vegeta’s tail, forcing Vegeta to spasm and clench around Kakarot’s cock, and Vegeta was quickly reduced to a series of breathless, incomphrehensible moans.

“Kakarot,” he managed to finally beg, breathless against the pressure of Kakarot’s arm. “Fuck me. _Fuck me_.”

Kakarot reacted with a snarl, and Vegeta felt him sink his teeth into Vegeta’s shoulder, fixing him in place as he fucked Vegeta into the mattress. Vegeta nearly sobbed as Kakarot rutted into him—with every thrust he felt like he was going to burst apart, Kakarot’s cock so thick and wide inside him that he could barely bring himself to hold on for much longer—

“I want you—” Vegeta demanded, struggling to get the words out as Kakarot fucked all breath and sense from him. “I want you—to cum inside of me—”

“Fuck,” Kakarot hissed, pulling his mouth away from Vegeta’s shoulder to drag his teeth against his earlobe instead. “Oh, _fuck_.”

Kakarot’s movements became harder, more frantic, and he suddenly gave out a sharp cry as he did just what Vegeta had asked for—and Vegeta followed closely behind, the feeling of Kakarot finishing inside of him, pulsing and warm, more than enough to send him over the edge.

Vegeta’s entire body spasmed as he came, moaning as he felt his release splatter across his stomach. It was a long time before he stopped shaking, and slowly, Kakarot released his tail and pulled his arm out from around Vegeta’s neck. Vegeta could hear him panting to catch his breath as he pulled out of Vegeta’s body.

“Fuck,” he said beneath his breath, rolling over to slump into the mattress. “Wasn't prepared for that filthy mouth of yours.”

“Heat of the moment,” Vegeta grunted weakly, rolling over until he was lying next to Kakarot.

“Worse than a fuckin’ porn-holo, you are.”

Vegeta gave a weak shrug as he let his eyes slowly shift closed. “Thanks,” he said, struggling to muster the energy for sarcasm.

For a few moments, Vegeta thought he might fall asleep right there—he couldn’t remember the last time he had felt so thoroughly fucked and spent from it, and with Kakarot’s warmth radiating beside him—it was too inviting not to consider.

But then Kakarot rolled out of bed, and Vegeta’s eyes cracked open when he heard the soft rustling of him slipping his clothes back on.

“Kakarot?” Vegeta said, sitting up. “What are you doing?”

“Ah,” Kakarot said, rubbing the back of his head almost sheepishly as he turned away from Vegeta. “I kinda forgot to mention earlier—I’m actually due to ship out with my squad tonight.”

“You… you’re shipping out,” Vegeta said flatly, glaring at Kakarot as he finished pulling his pants on and picked up his armor from the floor. “Like, on a mission.”

“Yeah,” Kakarot said as he slipped back into his breastplate. “I was actually just killing some time back at the Root before I noticed you—I wasn’t exactly intending to, uh—”

“Have a quickie with the fucking Prince of Saiyans?” Vegeta snapped, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Well, shit, when you say it like _that_ ,” Kakarot laughed. “Look, the shower’s through that door over there if you like, and I don’t have any food, but you can have any of the beer in my fridge—”

“Fucking unbelievable,” Vegeta muttered as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, leaning over to try and find his pants on the floor.

“—the spare key’s just on the coffee table there, if you can lock up when you leave—”

“Seriously?” Vegeta nearly stumbled half-way into pulling his pants back on. “You’re just going to _leave_ me here?”

Kakarot paused just as he was sliding his scouter back on. “Yeah? Hell, you’re the Saiyan Prince, you said it yourself—not like you’re gonna rob me—”

“That’s not what I fucking meant,” Vegeta hissed, his shoulder knocking into Kakarot’s as he brushed past him, moving to the spot where he had left his boots earlier.

“Hey,” Kakarot said, catching Vegeta’s arm, and Vegeta’s glare narrowed as Kakarot pulled him in closer. “I’m sorry, I really hate to dash on you like this—no really, I do, this isn’t my style at all, but—”

Vegeta opened his mouth to rebuff him, but his words died suddenly in his throat when Kakarot’s palm cupped the side of his face.

“Listen,” he said, his hand sliding to the back of Vegeta’s neck until his fingers caught his hair. “I meant what I said earlier—I wasn’t joking when I gave you my number. Call me if you’re around again—hell, call me whenever you like.”

Vegeta felt a surge of heat flushing across his face as he tried to maintain his rage, and failed.

“Kakarot…”

Kakarot pressed a quick kiss to Vegeta’s forehead, and Vegeta raised an eyebrow at at the feeling—it was strangely soft, almost… tender?

“Wish me luck,” Kakarot said, flashing his grin as he turned away. “See you ‘round, Prince Vegeta.”

For the second time that night, Vegeta was left stunned as Kakarot walked away from him.

 

* * *

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

“Did you hear the shit went down on Rigel II? Word is Frieza looked ready to roll heads.” 

Kakarot slid his eyes toward his squadmate, chin still propped on his hand. “On Rigel II? Aren’t we up to IV now?”

Ulle threw her head back and laughed, showing teeth. “You’re lucky you’re strong, Kakarot, because you ain’t leading this squad on smarts. Rigel II just had an uprising, anyone else would have picked that up by now.” Her eyes seemed to gleam in the low lighting of the Root as she smirked at Kakarot. “Maybe even whoever it is you keep looking for.”

“Good one.” Kakarot smirked back, hiding behind cockiness and feeling vaguely guilty for it. He’d promised his prince secrecy, but keeping things from his squad didn’t sit right. They were closer than family in some ways, trying to guard each others’ backs on the battlefield and make sure everyone came home breathing. Unusually close for a Saiyan fighting squad. The members he’d managed to keep after Rixshing, at least.

Fucking Rixshing. No wonder the prince had been looking for a distraction. Best thing ever to come out of Rixshing, as far as Kakarot was concerned. 

Arisad’s mane swung as she rejoined them, refilled pitcher in hand and canines showing in a smirk. “You’ll never guess who I just ran into.”

“Who?” Kakarot kept his tone disinterested. They wouldn't have noticed Vegeta, would they? He couldn’t believe the prince risked such a flimsy disguise.

“That trumped up brother of yours.” Arisad took a gulp of beer, “looks about as triumphant as a wet cat. I’d say his last mission in the Royal Guard didn’t leave him covered in glory.”

She hadn’t recognized Vegeta then. That was a relief. Kakarot felt protective of the prince and his secrets. Unnecessarily so. He’d seen the Prince on the battlefield, the man needed no protection. Why there was a Royal Guard at all was a mystery.

A Royal Guard that could probably recognize the Prince through his flimsy disguise. Kakarot shifted uneasily in his chair, then stilled and hoped his squad hadn’t noticed.

“Guess I’d better say hi to my big brother, then.” Kakarot pushed to his feet, chair scraping across the sticky floor. “It’s been a while.”

His squad grunted agreement, getting to work on the refilled beer. But as Kakarot pushed through the crowded room towards his brothers towering figure, easy to spot now he was looking, he noticed a slighter figure slipping out the door.

Vegeta. Kakarot had just missed him. The prince hadn’t called. Maybe he really had just wanted the one night of distraction.

Kakarot ducked out of the bar anyway, hurrying after that distinctive spike of hair. Even if Vegeta had meant for a one time thing, Kakarot felt hooked. He’d been drawn in right from when he first spotted Vegeta leaning against the wall, drawn enough that he’d risked bluntly addressing the Prince, even invited him home. Something about the intensity of Vegeta had pulled Karaot in, a pull that strengthened at the reminder Vegeta fought on the front lines, the realization he’d been through the hell of Rixshing. And Vegeta had clearly been serious about needing a distraction after that hell.

“Long time no see,” Kakarot announced himself as he caught up to Vegeta, hoping the warning would keep him from getting a fist to the face as he grabbed Vegeta’s shoulder. He wasn’t prepared for the clenched teeth and fierce glower that Vegeta turned on him.

“‘If I’d wanted your company, I’d have asked,” Vegeta snapped, already moving to rid himself of Kakarot’s hand. 

Kakarot felt his eyebrows draw together, off-balance at the hostility of Vegeta’s greeting. He thought they’d left on okay terms, even if he had rushed off to his mission. He’d thought Vegeta might really take him up on the offer to call for a repeat. And he sure as hell wasn’t letting him go without at at least a conversation.

But now Vegeta was glaring furiously, and his only interest at the moment seemed to be in getting Kakarot’s hand off him.

“Come on, Vegeta, it’s just a greeting. Is that treasonous too, now?” Kakarot let his lips curl into a smirk, remembering how well that line of conversation had gone last time. This time, however, Vegeta almost looked pale at the direction things were taking. Almost as if it pained him. 

Kakarot released his grip. “You could have mentioned that it was the hand that was the problem, your royal Highness.”

Vegeta was still glaring. “Lost your powers of observation, Kakarot? You seemed convinced that you could see right through me the last time I encountered you.”

“Well, sure. It’s not like you were being shy about what you wanted last time,” Vegeta jerked his eyes away from Kakarot, suddenly fascinated by the ground, “but it seems to me like you were trying pretty hard to hide that injury. Worrying about projecting Royal strength even when you’re blowing off steam?”

Vegeta turned his whole body away from Kakarot, coiled as if he intended to make a run for it. “It’s no business of yours whether I’m injured. You think because I used you once as a distraction that now we have some kind of actual intimacy?”.

Kakarot shrugged. “What were you even doing here, if you’re trying to hide an injury? It’s the kind of thing that’d be pretty apparent in bed.”

Vegeta was still facing away from Kakarot, but Kakarot could see his hands as they clenched into fists. “I said it was no business of yours.”

“Were you looking for me?” Kakarot shifted forward, laid his hand very lightly on Vegeta’s shoulder.

Warm muscle bunched under Kakarot’s hand as Vegeta tensed. “What possible reason could I have to want your company, Kakarot.”

“Did you, though?” Kakarot watched Vegeta’s hair move slightly in the warm breeze.

“No, I do not.” Vegeta pulled away from Kakarot’s hand. “I came here for the same reason I did last time, Kakarot. The palace is the worst place to blow off steam.”

Kakarot closed the distance between them again, firmly caught hold of Vegeta’s opposite shoulder. But that also drew a wince. “Just how many places are you injured? I thought at least one of your shoulders would be safe.”

Vegeta’s chin dropped, and Kakarot heard him force out a burst of air. “Too many places.”

“Rixshing, again?”

Vegeta’s hair moved as he jerked his head in a sharp negative. “No. Rigel II”.

“The one where Frieza was looking to roll heads?” 

“So the rumors are already circling.” Vegeta’s jaw clenched. “Yes. Frieza was not well pleased with the outcome on Rigel II.”

If Vegeta had been injured in battle, then why wasn’t he in a healing tank? It made Kakarot uneasy. 

“You sure a beer wouldn’t help?” 

“No, Kakarot, I don’t think that it would,” Vegeta’s tone was tired, and Kakarot let his hand fall as Vegeta pulled away again.

“Well, you know where to find me if you change your mind. Since I’m not convinced you know how to use the call button on a scouter.”

That got him a laugh. “And I’m completely convinced you don’t understand the concept of manners.” But Kakarot saw that Vegeta’s lips were curved upward as Vegeta turned toward the palace, so he guessed Vegeta didn’t really mind his manners all that much.

Kakarot stood on the street’s packed red dirt for a while as he watched Vegeta leave. He wasn’t in the mood to go back to the Root. Too much Rigel II talk. Would only remind him that he hadn’t gotten Vegeta back into his bed, and that Vegeta had been hurt. Even when he could have been fixed up by a healing tank. 

Maybe it was pride thing, and Vegeta had refused the tank. The Prince’s pride and temper were legendary, though Vegeta seemed to have let go of all of that back at Kakarot’s apartment the other night. Kakarot hadn’t expected he’d have royalty literally begging to be fucked in his bed, but damned if he wasn’t ready to get used to the sight.

Kakarot dodged a drunken pair of soldiers staggering out of his apartment building in tandem, caught the door then paused holding it open. The figure rounding the corner had a familiar spike of hair, but was Kakarot just seeing what he wanted to see? No, that really was Vegeta approaching his building, expression unreadable. 

“So you changed your mind?” Kakarot was still holding the door, and felt Vegeta’s warmth against him for a moment in the narrow doorway as Vegeta pushed past to the interior.

Vegeta must have paid attention last time. He headed straight to Kakarot’s room, then leaned impatiently against the wall until Kakarot fumbled the door open. Silent the whole damn time. Kakarot grabbed a couple beers, shoved one into Vegeta’s hand. Vegeta was leaning against the closed door in a pose that should have looked relaxed, but Kakarot could see tension again in the line of Vegeta’s jaw.

“Can I offer your highness a seat?”

That got him a sharp look from Vegeta. “Don’t call me that. Not today.”

“Vegeta, then. A seat? A distraction? I’m all yours.”

“All mine, hmm?” Vegeta moved into the room, standing toe to toe with Kakarot and clenching his left hand on the shoulder strap of Kakarot’s armor. “Now that you mention it, having you on your back this time might be just the distraction I need.”

Kakarot smiled. “Like I said, Vegeta, I’m all yours.”

_  
The energy beam blazed past Vegeta, too fast to block, and obliterated another landing pod. Vegeta snarled and twisted in the air to shoot a ki blast at the weapon that had fired it, but his attack was blocked yet again by the accursed shielding that Rigel II’s inhabitants had somehow secured to defend their weaponry. Neither could have been developed by the natives of Rigel II. Assuming that the intel was accurate. That meant they had allies, which meant yet more insubordination of Frieza, which meant one more detail Vegeta couldn’t report without incurring Frieza’s wrath, and couldn’t withhold without incurring worse._

_If the landing team Vegeta led couldn’t find a way past the ki shields, then they couldn’t eliminate the energy weapons. If they couldn’t eliminate the energy weapons, then the landing pods would continue to be annihilated, leaving them trapped on Rigel II unless the PTO sent replacement pods. As long as the energy weapons remained in play, replacement would be a risk - the Rigellians had already taken down the transporter ship intended to offer medical and communications support to the landing party, and Frieza would likely be too livid at the loss of resources to authorize replacement pods unless there was a truly compelling argument for it. That argument would be nearly impossible to make as long as Vegeta’s team continued to accomplish so little against the enemy’s offenses._

_Frustratingly convinced of the futility of his ki blasts yet again, Vegeta was forced to drop behind one of the tangled igneous rock formations that made up the bulk of the planet’s surface, attempting to regulate his breathing in the oxygen-poor atmosphere. Heavy volcanic activity had formed a twisted landscape of black, brittle spires on the surface of Rigel II, and constantly supplied the air with sulfurous and carbonic fumes ill-suited to Saiyan biology. It was slowing Vegeta down, and had enough of an impact on Raditz that the other Saiyan had struggled even more than usual to dodge attacks. Raditz was among those who had already been driven back to the hastily erected medical tent on one of the more stable parts of Rigel II’s surface._

_From his new ground-level vantage point, Vegeta attempted once again to lay eyes on the energy weapons the enemy was using or, ideally, their shield-generation mechanism. Rigel II’s cooled lava formations provided endless blockades, dips, and shadows for the weapons to be hidden. Although Vegeta could aim at their general direction based on the beam’s trajectory, he and his landing team had not had success in getting close enough to any of the firing points to attempt physically breaching the ki-shields. Vegeta winced as another energy beam soared past and met its target. At this rate they’d achieve nothing but loss of supplies, not even enough detail on the enemy’s technology to inform a repeat attack._

_The scouters were also useless. Vegeta had no idea how or why, but the damn devices had been utterly unable to detect any large life forms other than those of the landing party. Cursing both the Rigellians and whatever whim of Freeza’s had led to this damned planet being next on the list to conquer, Vegeta rose into the air again to make his way toward one of the apparent points of shooting. He’d have to move quickly - the last soldiers sent to investigate the sources of shooting had either been felled by energy beams, or had arrived at the source to find nothing there. Apparently the enemies had something mobile as well as shielded._

_Vegeta kept low in the air so the rock spires partially hid his approach. His scouter squawked occasionally with updates from the landing team - all bad news. Focused on both the trajectory of the occasional beam aimed at more landing pods, and on the scouter chatter, he missed the slight shimmer in the air that would have given away the edge of the shield until he flew directly into it, nearly breaking his nose in the process._

_Teeth gritted against the bright spot of pain and a rapidly approaching headache at the overall situation, Vegeta evaluated his options. The energy barrier seemed to block life forms as well as ki blasts. He still had no visual on the technology generating it, which meant that it was either much larger than he had predicted or that the enemies were even better hidden than expected. That meant throwing projectiles at the technology, while it would have been satisfying, still wasn’t feasible._

_But another, even more satisfying option was open to him. Vegeta felt a feral grin spread across his face for the first time since beginning this farce of an invasion. Gathering his ki, he slammed his hands to the ground and roared as he released a ki blast directly into the planet’s brittle surface. Rigel II’s landscape would be pressed to his advantage, for a change. The brittle rock splintered with a pleasing cacophony of cracks and booms, toppling spires and opening crevices wide enough to easily swallow a landing pod. He watched with delight as the destruction spread toward the horizon, ki gathered around him, and noticed with relief that the shimmer of the shield had dropped out of the air. It seemed his plan had worked - by dropping the ground out from under the shield generator and operators, he had finally, finally disabled one of the damned things._

_Reenergized, Vegeta poured his ki into flight, blazing low across the planet’s surface looking for some Rigellians to put his fists through. An energy beam grazed his ribs, too close to dodge, proof that he’d been sighted. And providing a direction. The first enemy he laid eyes on, he dispatched with a sharp sweep of his arm, separating the enemy’s head from shoulders. The next several would-be attackers went down with ki-scorched holes through their torsos. Not as bloody a death as Vegeta would have liked to deal at that moment, but much faster. He could sense their ki now, no longer hidden behind their energy shields, and tipped his flight slightly left to aim at the densest cluster. That was likely where their machinery was._

_The next energy beam nearly hit him head-on, but the light of its charging alerted him just in time to drop altitude so it only singed his hair, leaving an acrid smell. Vegeta pushed his right hand forward, palm out, showering the weapon with ki spheres until it collapsed in a splintered, smoking, heap, still barely distinguishable from the planet’s surface with its black coating camouflaging it. He landed amidst the Rigellians rushing toward him, shaking off small-arms blaster fire, and spun to sink his foot into an enemy’s ribcage with a satisfying crunch. Without their ki shield and large energy weapon, the Rigellians quickly fell, shattered by Vegeta’s assault._

_If he could find a piece of the shield generator, he would be able to justify evacuation from this forsaken planet. Panting in the thin atmosphere, Vegeta strode forward to investigate a deep crevice near the main energy weapon. Something metallic glinted partway down, and if he’d had more air he might have sighed with relief. Though he’d managed to find a way past the shield generator for this one group, it couldn’t be replicated on a large scale, not when the enemies were so mobile and well hidden._

_Slowly descending through the air toward the metallic glint, Vegeta was relieved as he got closer to see that it was part of a much larger structure. They’d take the whole thing back to the science team at Frieza Planet 572. Vegeta had heard rumors of a new technician there, a mammalian species with a similar appearance to Saiyans, who could disassemble and interpret nearly any alien technology despite coming from a backwater planet with few such advances. He would charge this technician with solving their Rigellian shielding dilemma, and once the cowards could no longer hide behind their shields it would be a simple task to dispatch them. Efficient. Surely even Frieza would eventually see past his wrath to support such a course of action. Vegeta threw back his head, roaring with laughter at the thought. No. Frieza would not be reasonable. Nonetheless, the machinery Vegeta now held in his hand was reason enough to leave Rigel II, and face the consequences before they compounded._

 

Sweat beaded invitingly along the long column of Kakarot’s throat, and Vegeta leaned up along the length of Kakarot’s muscled torso to sweep it up with his tongue.

“Vegeta,” Kakarot bit out, panting, “this isn’t what I had in mind when you said you wanted me on my back.”

Vegeta’s lips curved into a sharp smirk as he lifted himself back up off Kakarot, raising himself over Kakarot’s body before grinding himself back down on Kakarot’s cock to draw gasps from both of them as Kakarot’s cock brushed Vegeta’s prostate. “Well, Kakarot, this is certainly what _I_ had in mind.”

Kakarot groaned, canted his hips upward to meet Vegeta’s next downward twist, curled is tail around Vegeta’s thigh. “Wish I could get you shirtless again, Vegeta. Told you last time that you shouldn’t be covered up.”

Vegeta ignored the complaint, focusing instead on the searing pleasure shooting up his spine following another downward grind. He watched Kakarot’s pectoral muscles flex as Kakarot heaved for breath, on the edge of losing control, head thrown back at the sensations. Vegeta licked his lips. They were both close. 

“Where’s that dirty mouth this time, huh,” Kakarot sounded wrecked, and Vegeta slid both hands along Kakarot’s ribcage and wondered why he was making an effort to talk. 

“I don’t need to tell you to fuck me this time, Kakarot, because right now I’m the one fucking you.” Vegeta voice was rough as he drew himself down on Kakarot again, taking him to the hilt, and Kakarot came with a sharp cry. 

“Disappointing, Kakarot. I thought you’d last longer than that.” Vegeta lifted his hips, allowing Kakarot to slide out of him, and was suddenly flipped onto his back as Kakarot growled and surged forward.

The pain from the wounds on his back blinded Vegeta momentarily, but then Kakarot’s hot mouth was on Vegeta’s cock, swallowing him completely, and on top of the earlier sensations the combined intensity pushed Vegeta over the edge. He spilled down Kakarot’s throat with a strangled groan, lay there panting as Kakarot obediently swallowed around him.

“Sorry,” Kakarot murmured a moment later, looking up to meet Vegeta’s eyes. “I forgot about your back. Or shoulders. Or however many bits of you are injured, that you’re stubbornly hiding under that half a battlesuit.”

Vegeta pushed Kakarot away so that he could curl onto his side, staring fixedly toward the curtained window across the room rather than look at Kakarot. “Forget it.”

Kakarot sighed and settled behind Vegeta, close enough to feel his warmth but not quite touching Vegeta’s back. His hand smoothed over Vegeta’s hip. He’d apparently decided to stick with only touching the parts of Vegeta that were visibly uninjured, which suited Vegeta just fine.

The softer sensation was more pleasant than it had any right to be, and Vegeta told himself to move away, to not let Kakarot any closer than he already was. Kakarot was a third class. A distraction. A clever mouth to take Vegeta’s mind off matters. Vegeta couldn’t allow himself to think of Kakarot as anything more, couldn’t allow himself to think of Kakarot as a confidant. 

Kakarot continued to trail his thumb back and forth along Vegeta’s hip bone, but Vegeta felt him draw in a deep breath, as if in preparation for saying something. Probably something he shouldn’t.

“At least you came back in one piece.” Kakarot’s statement shocked Vegeta into a response. “What do you care, Kakarot? I’m no responsibility of yours.”

“No, but the more Saiyan lives we have, the better”. Instead of his light hearted teasing from last time, Kakarot seemed to have serious matters on his mind this time. “Vegeta, how much longer can we keep this up?”

Vegeta could see street lights outside through a gap in Kakarot’s threadbare curtains. Occasional chatter from the path outside drifted up, audible now that the apartment was quiet. Kakarot would have heard numbers, of course. There hadn’t been many Saiyans to begin with compared to most other races, and every week brought more reports of deaths while on missions for the PTO. Vegeta privately wondered if this was Freeza’s goal. To use the Saiyans up completely, spending their lives in battles just slightly beyond their power to win. A humiliating end to a once proud warrior race.

“That’s not your concern, Kakarot.” No purpose would be served by Vegeta sharing his suspicions. He knew from his duties at the Palace that there was no way to free the Saiyans from Freeza’s grip. If they refused to go on missions, they’d be killed outright. If they continued to go on missions, they’d continue to die in Freeza’s battles. There was no winning move, none that Vegeta could see at present. Short of killing Freeza himself. A pleasant dream, and nothing more.

Kakarot growled at Vegeta this time. “There’s a lot of things you think I shouldn’t be concerned with tonight, Vegeta.”

“Perhaps it’s simply you who is trying to invite yourself into matters beyond your station, Kakarot. That truly could be considered treason.” Vegeta moved away from Kakarot’s comforting warmth, started to gather his clothes. It would be dangerous to stay here, Kakarot was simply too tempting and too persistent. 

The motion pulled at Vegeta’s back, and he bit back a hiss of pain. With any luck, that engineer woman from the backwater planet would make some progress on understanding the Rigel II shield generators. Vegeta had been ordered to return to Rigel II 10 cycles from now, and if he wasn’t able to present a success he would face far worse than Frieza’s whips next time. He might join the ranks of the dead rather sooner than expected. 

Still curled on the bed, Kakarot watched Vegeta with dark eyes. His tail curved against the sheets, twitching slightly in irritation. “Back to the palace then, your highness?”

That had to be deliberate. Vegeta had asked Kakarot to use his name for the duration of the evening, which until now Kakarot had respected. Kakarot’s patience must have been used up. No matter. Vegeta would shortly return to the stifling atmosphere of the palace, tension over the latest PTO negotiations so thick the air felt heavy with it. Kakarot calling him by his title now hastened the return of that tension only fractionally.

“Yes, Kakarot.” Vegeta pulled on a boot, the last item of clothing he needed to retrieve from the floor. “Back to the palace.”

“Well.” Kakarot slid into a sitting position, a display of fluid muscle that drew Vegeta’s eyes in spite of himself. Kakarot noticed, and smiled. “Maybe you could actually call me next time you need a distraction, yeah?”

Vegeta froze for a moment, the repeated invitation coming unexpected after the tone of their prior conversation. Kakarot stretched deliberately, smirking as Vegeta was once again drawn to follow the play of muscles under his skin. “It would be easier, after all, Vegeta. I almost missed catching you this time.”

“I’ll… keep it in mind.” Vegeta turned, striding towards the door, refusing to look back at the inviting scene on the bed again. But as pushed his way out of Kakarot’s apartment he thought that, yes. He probably _would_ call next time.


	4. Chapter 4

He had only been on the surface of Chorys-delta for an hour when Kakarot realized his squad was fucked.

He had sought shelter in a thicket of trees—or at least what passed for trees on this miserable shit-swamp of a moon—and tried to ignore the searing pain in his left arm as he worked to catch his breath. One of the Chorysians had gotten the drop on him—not something that would have happened, if he had the proper back-up—and caught him with a ki-blast that would have killed Kakarot had he not dodged and killed his attacker at the last second. Instead, he was left with a trail of blistering burns down his arm, third-degree if he had to guess, and the stinging sap dripping onto him from the gnarled, fungus-like tree he was leaning against probably wasn’t helping matters. Even the flora in this hell-hole was trying to kill him.

He glanced through a narrow break in the thicket, hoping to catch a glimpse of one the enemies, but the bastards were crafty. They were light and nimble in the low-grav, and had some sort of camouflaging ability that none of mission briefing had bothered to mention. He almost had to wonder if that particular omission was deliberate.

He was starting to wonder if the whole damn clusterfuck of a mission was deliberate.

There was no way this mission was going to end in anything but failure. This sort of enemy and terrain called for a special ops force—Kakarot couldn’t figure out why his squad or the others in the platoon had even been assigned here. It was like they weren’t even expected to secure control of the moon—it felt more like a particularly sadistic training simulation.

Kakarot was certain they were all going to die here if they didn’t pull back soon.

As if on cue, a flashing read-out suddenly bloomed across the lens of his scouter. It was Ulle—her vitals were tanking, and fast. Hit by one of the Corysians, no doubt. Kakarot tapped at his scouter, quickly skimming through the local data feed to confirm her position—he was the closest squadmate to her, and he was nearly a klick away.

“Fuck,” Kakarot muttered, slamming his head back against the trunk of the tree he was leaning against. “Damn it!”

He took a moment before composing himself and tapping at his scouter again, tuning into the main communication channel.

“We’re pulling out,” he hissed to his squadmates. “Ulle’s down, I’m going to assist—the rest of you get back to your pods—”

“Kakarot—the other squads are already pulling out—we’ve got zero fucking backup here—”

“Can’t blame them,” Kakarot grunted. “Everyone get out _now_.”

Then Kakarot left his hiding spot, and the enemy was already waiting.

Three Chorysians suddenly materialized—their camouflage dropping as they surged out of the tangled brush of the jungle, and Kakarot aimed a series of haphazard ki blasts as he flew fast and low to the forest floor. He missed them, but the ensuing fire gave him the cover he needed—the flames licked high and fast in the low gravity, and he could hear his pursuers shrieking in the choking smoke as he fled.

He moved fast, knowing he couldn’t afford to squander the time he had bought himself. He followed the furious blinking of his scouter, dodging trees and thick foliage and strangling vines, until finally he caught the scent of blood. It burned in his nostrils more potently than the smell of smoke, or the pungent scent of the jungle, and he followed it until he found a pool of it seeping into the muck of the forest floor. There he finally found Ulle, her small form slumped against the base of a tree.

Her eyes were fluttering with each shallow, rasping breath she took, and she was pressing a hand against a hole in the side of her chest, her fingers slippery with blood as it bubbled up from the charred hole in her armor.

“Kakarot,” she choked when she saw Kakarot kneel down in front of her. “Damned Chorysian got me good, huh?” And she lifted her other hand to point at the corpse of the Chorysian soldier who had felled her, its jaws hanging open at an unnatural angle, its leathery wings burnt black from what Kakarot assumed was a well-aimed ki-blast.

“Looks like you got it back, at least,” Kakarot said, giving a bitter laugh as he used his good arm to lift Ulle to her feet, throwing her arm over his shoulder and supporting her weight with his body. “Come on—I’m getting us out of here.”

“‘Bout time,” Ulle coughed, and Kakarot didn’t miss the blood on her lips. “Never should have been sent to this hell-hole at all.”

“Don’t talk,” Kakarot grunted as he started to half-carry her across the forest floor. “You just focus on keeping pressure on that wound, all right? Our pods aren’t far.”

Ulle groaned something, but Kakarot was too preoccupied to hear as he went to work pulling them both through the underbrush.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Kakarot winced as he pulled a fresh set of armour on, the new skin on his arm still tight and raw. A few hours in the med tank had grown it back well-enough, but it would be a while yet before his nerve endings acclimated to the fresh layer of dermis.

After pulling his boots and arm bands on, Kakarot fixed his scouter into place, looking over at the nearest healing tank as he did. Ulle floated unconscious in the thick fluid, and Kakarot cringed at the sight of her slowly-healing chest wound. He’d been lucky to get her back to her pod as quickly as he had—she would have bled out on Chorys-delta if he hadn’t gotten her into stasis fast enough.

Kakarot didn’t look away from the tank as he caught the arm of a passing medic.

“Hey,” he said, nodding in Ulle’s direction. “How long’s she gonna be down for?”

“O-oh, a couple of days, likely,” the medic stammered. “There was more internal damage than we had realized. It won’t be healed overnight.”

“Right,” Kakarot muttered, and turned away from the medic to check the blinking messages waiting for him on his scouter. He expected a debriefing, or a summons for his next mission—some idiot part of himself even hoped it might be a call from Vegeta—but instead found a message waiting from Arisad.

 _Me and Turniz are regrouping at the Root for drinks… head over when you’re out of the tank_.

Kakarot chewed his lip at the invitation. Part of him wanted to head back to his apartment and sleep for the next year—but he’d be lying if he said he couldn’t use some friendly company right now.

 _Be there shortly,_ he tapped into the scouter

“Well, looks like we’re all heading to the usual spot,” Kakarot said in Ulle’s direction, even though he knew from personal experience that you couldn’t hear a thing from inside the tank. “Wish you could join us, Ulle. I’m sure Arisad’ll be here the second you’re cleared for decanting.” He paused, chuckling to himself as a wistful grin flitted across his lips. “But, hey, maybe I’ll get lucky—maybe a certain Saiyan Prince will show up again.”

Kakarot fiddled with his scouter for a few moments, scrolling again through his messages as if this time he might find something he missed. But there was nothing—from Saiyan Princes, or otherwise.

“Well, a guy can dream,” Kakarot sighed before hitting the power-down button.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Kakarot had barely stepped through the door of the Root when a large hand clapped him on the shoulder.

“Kakarot!”

Kakarot turned, but didn’t have time to react before he was pulled into a tight bear-hug.

“Arisad,” he managed to half-laugh, half gasp as his squadmate made every effort to crush his ribs.

“Man, am I happy to see you,” she beamed at him, pulling away to hold him at arm’s length. “The medics said that if you hadn’t gotten to Ulle when you did, she would’ve—”

“Hey, it was nothing,” Kakarot said, laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “You guys would have done the same for me.”

“Well, either way, your drinks are on me, tonight,” Arisad said.

Kakarot rubbed at the back of his neck, wincing. “Ah—I’m not sure if I’m in the mood for drinking tonight, to tell you the truth—”

“Come on, Kakarot, one round,” Arisad insisted, punching him in the shoulder before jerking a thumb towards the back of the bar. “Turniz got us some seats in the back, I’ll meet you in a sec.”

Arisad bounded away in the direction of the bar, and Kakarot made his way to the back of the room, pushing past clusters of patrons until he found the booth Arisad had been pointing at. As expected, Turniz was already there, his chin resting in one hand as he watched the crowded bar, his other hand wrapped protectively around a half-empty mug of ale.

“Hey, kid,” Kakarot grunted, flashing him a grin as he slid into the opposite side of the booth.

Turniz startled, sitting up straight.

“Oh—h-hey,” he stuttered. “Your, uh, stint in the medbay go okay?”

Kakarot flexed his freshly-healed arm, ignoring the dull pain where the burn had been. “Good as new.”

Turniz nodded and looked down at his beer, a few stray bangs falling to cover his eyes. Even though he was easily taller than Kakarot by about a head, the younger Saiyan had a way of making himself seem somehow smaller when he was nervous.

“Something bothering you?” Kakarot asked.

Turniz shrugged, feigning nonchalance, but even in the dim lighting of the bar, Kakarot didn’t miss the shade of pink that coloured his cheeks.

“Oh—not really,” he said, taking a tentative sip from his drink before he continued. “I guess—just feeling a little embarrassed by how quickly things went south on Chorys-delta. I—I should have been able to do better.”

Kakarot gave a short laugh, leaning back and throwing his arm casually over the back of the booth.

“Turniz, I know you’re still pretty new at this,” he said. “But there’s nothing you, or me, or anyone could have done to salvage that mission. It was a total wash from the beginning—why we were even sent there at all is beyond me.”

“I guess I just—expected myself to be able to put up more of a fight, you know?”

“Don’t beat yourself up, kid,” Kakarot assured him. “Trust me, when you’ve been at this as long as I have, you learn when to stay and fight, and when to turn tail and run. Sometimes it’s the difference between life and death. I’ve learned that the hard way.”

Memories of his failures on Rixshing bubbled up to the to forefront of Kakarot’s memory, and he felt his entire body stiffen at the thought. Turniz opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated, and settled on taking another sip from his beer instead.

Two mugs of ale suddenly slammed down on the table, shattering the tension in an instant, and Arisad was sliding into the seat next to Turniz, her canines flashing in a broad smile.

“There you go, Boss,” Arisad said, winking as she held up her own glass as if for a toast. “Drink up!”

Kakarot picked up his mug, offering a bitter grin as he clinked his drink against Arisad’s. He watched her take a deep swig from her glass before following suit, tilting his own glass back for a taste.

Gods knew he could use it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was hours later before Kakarot arrived home at his apartment.

Arisad had convinced him and Turniz to stay at the Root for another round. Then two. Then three. And for awhile it had been a welcome distraction, and by the time Kakarot was halfway into his last drink, he had forgotten all about Rixshing, and Chorys-delta, and every other ugly world just like them. He was able to laugh easily with his squadmates, long enough to even stop searching the crowd for a particular head of flame-shaped hair.

But now, alone, in his small, threadbare apartment, he felt sluggish. Detached. Too tired to do anything but slump back against his couch, but too restless to make his way to bed. He pulled off his scouter, tossing it onto the coffee table, and followed up by shrugging out of the top of his armour and dropping it to the floor.

He was just in the middle of pulling off his boots when his scouter suddenly pinged to life.

Kakarot lifted an eyebrow. It was too late in the night for a debriefing—maybe one of his squadmates was messaging him? But the device continued to ping, and Kakarot realized it wasn’t a message, but a live call—an emergency mission bulletin, then?

He grabbed the device, but the source of the call was encrypted. His throat went dry. It couldn’t be—

“Hello?” he said, accepting the call as he slid the device back over his ear.

A low, familiar voice growled from the other end. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Nah, just got home, actually,” he answered, somehow managing to keep his voice cool and even despite the sudden uptick in his pulse. “Can’t say I was expecting a booty call from the Prince of All Saiyans at this hour, though.”

“Don’t be crude, Kakarot.”

Kakarot couldn’t resist a smirk. “But this _is_ a booty call, right?”

“I’m on my way up to your apartment now,” Vegeta said. “Don’t make me change my mind.”

Kakarot began to answer, but Vegeta had already terminated the connection. Kakarot sat back, frozen in a sort of stunned disbelief. Part of him had honestly never expected Vegeta to actually call his number when he had given it to him, but now that he had—Kakarot shook his head, as if trying to rouse himself from a dream.

He finally pulled himself from his couch, tossing his scouter back to the table, and began to pace the narrow length of his apartment. His palms felt sweaty as his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, his tail twitching behind him just as uneasily. Embarrassing as it was, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Vegeta since their last encounter, not really—and the thought of Vegeta actually seeking him out, materializing out of nowhere to show up at his apartment—

The firm knock that finally sounded at his apartment door was a welcome relief.

He moved toward the door, throwing it open with perhaps a little too much eagerness—and sure enough, found none other than Vegeta at his doorstep. He was clad in a dark, form-fitting combat suit, sans armour, one eye obscured by the ruby lens of his scouter. Kakarot couldn’t help but lick his lips, his mouth already watering at the sight of him.

“No disguise tonight?” Kakarot said.

“No need,” Vegeta muttered as he brushed past Kakarot into the apartment. “I wasn’t lurking around any dive bars this evening. And I know how to navigate my own Capital with some discretion.”

Kakarot closed the door, and watched as Vegeta walked across the apartment like he owned it, only stopping when he reached the bed. Without invitation, he sat down, pulling off his scouter and dropping it to the nightstand, before beginning to toe off his boots.

“Looking for another distraction, so soon?” Kakarot asked, crossing his arms over his bare chest as he leaned against the wall, a smirk pulling at his lips. “Or was Your Highness simply lying awake in his royal chambers, pining for me so deeply that it left him awake at such an hour?”

Vegeta snorted, and retaliated with a smirk of his own. “Don’t flatter yourself. Besides, I get the sense that perhaps you’re the one in need of a distraction tonight.”

Kakarot’s eyebrows drew together. “Excuse me?”

“I read the reports on the Chorys mission,” Vegeta said as he stood up from the bed. “I couldn’t help but notice your name in the service records.”

A brief surge of anger flared within Kakarot before he could tamp it down

“Yeah, well, let’s just say that particular fucking debacle was well above my paygrade.”

“I’m aware,” Vegeta said. “You’re lucky to be alive. The death toll from that particular excursion, it was…” Vegeta looked away, shaking his head. “And for nothing. All for a moon of absolutely zero strategic worth.”

“Well, thanks for the intel,” Kakarot said, letting out a bitter laugh. “So I guess it’s the third date when it’s okay to share state secrets?”

“It’s nothing I’m sure you haven’t figured out already,” Vegeta muttered, dragging his gaze back to Kakarot. Kakarot opened his mouth to say something, but then suddenly Vegeta moved, closing the distance between them until he had Kakarot trapped against the wall. Vegeta’s hands brushed against the sides of his body, his thumbs running down the ridges of Kakarot’s abdomen until finally settling just above his waistband.

“Your injuries from last time healed yet?” Kakarot asked, changing the subject. His bare skin burned beneath Vegeta’s fingertips, and he hated the way Vegeta’s gloves got in the way of feeling Vegeta’s hands completely. Kakarot wondered how Vegeta would react if he simply tore them off with his teeth.

“Well enough,” Vegeta growled, leaning closer until his lips found Kakarot’s neck, dragging a kiss across Kakarot’s throat.

“Good,” Kakarot said, and pulled Vegeta in closer, catching Vegeta’s mouth with his own. Vegeta leaned hungrily into the kiss, his hands suddenly on Kakarot’s chest, pinning him to the wall with a strength that left Kakarot breathless beneath his lips.

Kakarot’s tongue parted Vegeta’s lips, and he growled against Vegeta’s mouth as he gripped him by the waist, grinding their hips together. The motion earned a sharp snarl from Vegeta, and his tail snapped hard around Kakarot’s wrist.

“I’m not going to give you the chance to be a tease tonight,” Vegeta hissed, and Kakarot groaned as Vegeta’s hand cupped him between the legs, palming the bulge of his stiffening arousal as it strained against the material of his leggings.

“Oh?” Kakarot challenged, but his breath hitched in his throat as Vegeta’s hand squeezed him.

“I want you on your back again,” Vegeta ordered. “I want to taste you this time.”

Kakarot’s legs threatened to give out beneath him, but somehow he managed a grin. “I meant it before, Vegeta—I’m all yours.” He leaned in closer, his breath whispering across Vegeta’s ear. “Any way you want me.”

“Good,” Vegeta said, and before Kakarot could get another word in, Vegeta’s hand moved to grip his arm, and began pulling him towards the bed. Kakarot sat down on the mattress, expecting Vegeta to join him, but instead Vegeta stood before him at the edge of the bed. He tugged off his gloves, and then the top of his battlesuit, and Kakarot was drawn to the rippling form of his muscles, and the latticework of scars that crossed them—some fresher than others, Kakarot noticed.

Vegeta caught Kakarot’s stare, and his eyes narrowed as his tail flicked behind him.

“Lay back,” he ordered, and Kakarot did as commanded, lying back until only his elbows kept him propped up. He continued to watch as Vegeta slipped out of the rest of the battlesuit, his body completely bared, and Kakarot licked his lips as he took in the full sight of him.

But he didn’t have long to savor the image before Vegeta crawled onto the bed, smooth and lithe as he moved in the darkness, and he made short work of peeling off Kakarot’s leggings. Kakarot reached impulsively for his own cock, left hard and aching against his stomach, but Vegeta caught his wrist before he could. Kakarot hissed and writhed in Vegeta’s grip, desperate for some measure of relief.

“No,” Vegeta said, canines flashing. “I said I wanted to taste you.”

Vegeta kneeled between Kakarot’s legs, and Kakarot relented as he pushed his knees apart. Vegeta bent low over Kakarot’s body, his hands braced on Kakarot’s thighs as he pressed a line of hard kisses down Kakarot’s stomach, then to Kakarot’s inner thigh, Kakarot withholding a gasp as Vegeta’s teeth scraped at sensitive skin.

One of Kakarot’s hands buried itself in Vegeta’s hair, his back arching insistently as Vegeta’s mouth hovered over him. Vegeta flashed a smirk from his spot between Kakarot’s legs, and Kakarot groaned when Vegeta’s hand finally coiled around the base of his shaft.

Vegeta pumped him slowly, his thumb brushing across the tip just light enough to torment Kakarot, and a snarl bubbled up from his throat as he all but thrashed in Vegeta’s grip. By the time Vegeta’s tongue finally flicked across his cock, Kakarot was cursing beneath his breath, his fist tightening harder into Vegeta’s hair.

Vegeta’s lips touched him first, a wet kiss at the head of Kakarot’s cock that was followed by the flat of his tongue, lapping the length of him. Kakarot’s hips bucked upward, just slightly, but it was enough for Vegeta to notice—Kakarot didn’t miss the grin on Vegeta’s lips that vanished the moment his mouth swallowed Kakarot’s cock entirely.

“Oh, fuck,” Kakarot gasped, the warmth of Vegeta’s mouth overwhelming—a rippling heat that left Kakarot panting. Kakarot bit the back of his fist, trying to smother a moan, but the action earned a sharp growl from Vegeta—the sound hummed torturously at the base of Kakarot’s shaft, and Kakarot felt his eyes roll back.

Vegeta gripped him tight with one hand as his mouth bobbed down the length of Kakarot’s shaft, but with his other hand, he felt blindly at the mess on Kakarot’s nightstand, knocking over his scouter and an empty beer bottle before finding the bottle he was looking for. He pulled away from Kakarot then, and Kakarot bit harder against the back of his hand.

“You can try to silence yourself,” Vegeta taunted as he squeezed oil into his palm, slicking his fingers. “But I’ll have you begging yet.”

Kakarot shifted where he lay, throbbing at the loss of Vegeta’s mouth. Sweat was already beading across his forehead, prickling on the back of his neck.

“I dunno,” he panted, somehow managing a pained grin as he caught Vegeta’s gaze. “I don’t think my my mouth’s quite as filthy as yours.”

Vegeta smirked. “We’ll see.”

Vegeta resumed his position between Kakarot’s legs, and didn’t give him a chance to brace himself before he took Kakarot into his mouth again. Only this time, he spread Kakarot’s legs at the same time, and plunged one, then two fingers inside of him. Kakarot’s entire body stiffened at the combined sensations of Vegeta’s mouth and hand, working him open until he was shuddering and breathless and cursing the name of every god he could think of.

“V-vegeta,” he stuttered, even the back of fist unable to muffle the pleading, desperate edge of his voice, and he hated that Vegeta was right—Kakarot already felt painfully close to begging.

Vegeta’s fingers moved slowly inside of him, leaving him slick everywhere his hand touched, before pulling his mouth away again.

“You sound like you’re close,” he growled, continuing to stroke Kakarot long and hard with his other hand. “If you ask nicely, I might let you finish like this.”

“You’re a real bastard, you know that?” Kakarot hissed.

“Hm,” Vegeta said. “I think I might actually prefer “Your Highness” to that one.”

“I can think of some other choice things to call you—” Kakarot started, but then suddenly Vegeta had pulled out and crawled over him, his body settling heavily over Kakarot’s while still nestled between Kakarot’s thighs. His lips caught Kakarot’s in a rough kiss, and Kakarot arched his back until he could feel their bodies them grinding together, earning a strangled groan from Vegeta that lit Kakarot with a desperate fever.

Vegeta gripped Kakarot’s thighs, and readjusted his body until he was pressing into Kakarot. The moment he slid inside, Kakarot let out a harsh cry, his hands groping for Vegeta’s back, pulling him closer. Vegeta’s breath shuddered as his chest came flush with Kakarot’s, and he set a slow, hard pace, pulled in closer with each thrust by Kakarot’s legs hooked around his hips.

Kakarot slipped an arm across Vegeta’s shoulder, digging his fingers into Vegeta’s hair until he could feel Vegeta’s ear pressed against his lips, and Vegeta fucked him harder even before Kakarot could beg him for it. Vegeta’s breath came in warm, hitching gasps against Kakarot’s throat, and Kakarot felt himself shivering at the feeling of it, coming unbearably close with each movement of Vegeta’s hips—

It was Vegeta’s tail that unravelled him. Kakarot felt it suddenly, coiling around his own, the sensation of fur against fur strangely intimate, and Vegeta’s lips suddenly pressed against his own, soft and warm, was what finished him completely. He moaned against Vegeta’s mouth as he came, and it must have been enough for Vegeta, because Kakarot felt him grinding hard against him, his release coming hot and deep inside Kakarot.

The pair remained coupled for a long time before Vegeta finally broke the kiss, and Kakarot was shaking and slick with sweat when Vegeta finally pulled out and rolled off him. Somewhere in the haze of Kakarot’s afterglow, he was distantly aware of Vegeta’s tail loosening from around his own—but it didn’t pull away completely.

Eventually, Kakarot cast his gaze at Vegeta, who was still heaving for his breath at Kakarot’s side, eyes closed. Kakarot felt like his world was spinning around him, unsure what to say to ease the strange ache that had settled in his chest.

“Fuck,” was what he settled on. “Wow.”

“Satisfied?” Vegeta grunted.

“That’s the best fuck I’ve had in—” Kakarot paused, considering it. “—well, ever.”

“Good,” Vegeta muttered, his voice thick and drowsy as he began to roll away, like he were about to lift himself from the bed.

But Kakarot’s hand caught his arm before he could. “Hey—you don’t have to run off like that, you know. Not if you don’t want to.”

Vegeta rolled his eyes, but stilled beneath his grip. “You know the drill, Kakarot. Back to the Palace.”

“Come on,” Kakarot snorted. “Will anyone really notice if you don’t get back until the morning?”

Vegeta looked away. “Kakarot—”

“Come on,” Kakarot said, pulling Vegeta against him as he pressed a short kiss to his temple. “Even Princes must need a warm body to sleep next to now and then, eh?”

Vegeta let out a defeated sigh. “You’re insufferable.”

“I promise I only snore a little bit.”

Vegeta scoffed, but Kakarot didn’t miss the way that Vegeta’s tail continue to brush against his own, soft and languid.

“Look, I gotta get up early to check up on one of my squadmates in the medbay,” Kakarot said. “We can get up at dawn and sneak out together.”

“Medbay?” Vegeta said, stiffening slightly in Kakarot’s embrace. “A Chorys-delta casualty?”

“Yeah,” Kakarot answered as Vegeta turned on his side to face him. “But it’s okay—we got her into a tank in time—”

“I know, it’s just—” Vegeta looked away. “It could be you in that medtank—you could have never made it off that moon at all.”

Kakarot lifted an eyebrow. “I mean, yeah, I guess—”

“Never mind,” Vegeta said quickly, shutting down wherever that particular line of conversation had been going. “It’s not important.”

Vegeta turned away from him, settling heavily against one of the pillows as he pulled at the bedcovers. Kakarot didn’t say anything else, as much as he would have liked to.

He had already convinced Vegeta to stay the night, after all. He wasn’t going to push his luck.


	5. Chapter 5

Vegeta’s footsteps echoed in the curved halls of the science base on Frieza Planet 572, the metallic and repetitive architecture reminding him of the larger transport ships. He tried to unclench his jaw, residual concern making him even tenser than usual. When he’d first read those reports from Chroys, seen that Kakarot had been one of those sent there. Well. That was of no consequence at present. He was here to determine if the bright-haired alien technician had made useful progress on his Rigel II problem, and if she hadn’t there would be hell to pay. Vegeta tried to push aside thoughts that the hell he faced would be far worse than hers. 

The lack of value Frieza placed on Saiyan lives became more apparent by the day. Kakarot’s Chorys mess had touched off an alarmingly personal concern in Vegeta, flooding his head with images of the lower-class warrior seared clean through by lethal ki blasts. Kakarot had survived, proving himself to be more than just a pretty face and tempting body, but the reprieve would be short-lived. Frieza was pushing all of the Saiyans at an unbelievable pace, now giving often mere days for rest and recovery before sending the battered teams to new and inexplicably deadly battlefields with little strategic importance. Fatalities were increasing at a horrifying rate, and Vegeta didn’t know how much more of it his people could take.

He reached the door of the requisite lab, and inhaled deeply through his nose in an attempt to quiet his thoughts. After achieving some momentary semblance of calm, his pressed his hand to the panel inset in the expanse of grey curving wall, and the entrance to the lab opened with a soft whir. The woman was bent over a collection of wiring spreading across one of the lab’s work benches, and her hair was an even more garish shade of blue than he remembered. It was irritatingly bright within the gloom of the base. She hadn’t looked up when Vegeta entered, so he growled to get her attention.

“Wha—,” she jumped, staring at him with wide eyes reminiscent of a prey animal, “what the _hell_ was that noise, huh?! If you want my attention, how about using actual words? I’m doing you a favor working on this after all, right, _your Highness_?”

Vegeta was momentarily stunned into silence by both the familiarity implied by her speech, and by the sarcastic way she pronounced his title. Both were at odds with the power Vegeta held over her, both physical and by his rank. 

“You should be more aware of your surroundings, woman,” was the terse reply Vegeta eventually settled on. “Tell me your progress. Have you found a way past the shielding?”

“Oh, have I _ever_ ,” her grin was wide and her manner infuriatingly cheerful, her irritation at Vegeta’s entrance utterly forgotten. “Also FYI, my name is Bulma, not ‘woman’. Anyway, the tech was ingenious, but yeah, I cracked it. You’re lucky you have a bona fide prodigy like me to turn to with this kind of thing. I’ve found your way past the shielding, and even more than that,” she paused, her grin growing impossibly wider and implausibly violent, “my shieldbreaker doesn’t just disable the shielding, it’ll light your targets up like a Christmas Tree.”

“Like a _what_?” Her report sounded like good news to Vegeta, but even without any technical jargon it barely made sense. “What the hell is a Christmas Tree?”

“A— oh, I guess you don’t have those where you’re from. Makes sense, it’s not like you’d have the same religions and when you get down to it a Christmas Tree is a religions tradition, it’s just, well, you look so much like a human…” she trailed off uneasily, finally picking up on Vegeta’s irritation at what sounded like an utter waste of time. “It’s, uh. A big tree that you cover with really bright lights, and the _point_ I was trying to make is that when the shielding technology is disabled it’s going to be really, really visible, probably from a long distance, so you’ll practically have a map to your enemies. You do have maps, right?”

Vegeta struggled to maintain a front of formal indifference by ignoring both the urge to roar with delight at the supposed map to his enemies, and the equally strong urge to bury his face in his hands and massage his temples after the flow of jargon and over familiarity he’d been subjected to. The urge to roar with delight was far stronger. With a way past the enemy shielding, he and his landing team could easily take Rigel II. It would be a resounding victory, surely enough to get Frieza to back off. For at least a little while. Unlike Chorys and its ilk, Rigel II was of extreme strategic importance, and Vegeta’s inability to conquer it last cycle had financial implications for the empire. Negative ones. 

“—nce Vegeta?” The blue-haired woman sounded perplexed, and also like she’d been trying to get his attention for a while. Vegeta refocused his gaze on her. 

“I wasn’t finished explaining, so although I know I’m awesome, don’t get too carried away with thinking it’ll be easy to take the planet yet— alright?” The mix of confidence and caution in the woman’s voice was maddening, and Vegeta didn’t know what to make of any aspect of her.

“What the hell are you on about now?” Vegeta snapped back, turning a fraction of his internal tension outward onto the woman.

“The actual way that my new tech works!” She said, throwing her hands up in an odd sharp gesture that seemed intended to convey irritation - she certainly had no ki to release with such a motion as a Saiyan might. “I’ve figured out how to break their shielding, but there’s a catch. You need to figure out how many different shields there are so that you can calibrate the power output of the shieldbreaker I designed. If you put out way more dampening than there are shields within range, you’ll blow up the shieldbreaker. If you don’t put out enough, you won’t be able to take down the enemy shields.”

A setback, but not an impassable one. “You’re saying the tool relies on balance?” Vegeta said, consciously forcing his hand back to remain at his side so he didn’t press his thumb against his lips while thinking. 

“Yes!” Her response was delighted, her smile brilliant and lighting up her entire face. Vegeta couldn’t keep up with this woman. “It needs balance, so you need to do some recon. I’ve made a meter that will help gauge how many shields there are, but you’ll need to figure out a way to transport it.”

“Simply done,” Vegeta responded. It was true — arranging for soldiers to fly in a surveying pattern to evaluate the extent of the enemy would be a simple matter, now that they had a meter that could detect the extent of the shielding. In fact, such a tool would have made a vast difference in their initial attack even without the additional weapon this woman had devised to disable the shielding. “You have the documentation and multiple sets of each tool?” At her nod, he continued, “then send them to Omeroe, they’re our technical lead for Rigel II.”

Omeroe would make short work of any additional technical arrangements necessary. With this, Vegeta would have a blatant win on the table for future negotiations with Frieza. Perhaps it could make a difference — if he could deliver a resounding victory for a planet of such strategic importance as Rigel II, perhaps he could challenge Frieza’s reckless use of Saiyan lives. Such a request would hinge on Saiyan victory, his own or that of others, but if he had some leverage for bargaining with Frieza at their next meeting, he could make an attempt. 

“—egeta!” The woman’s voice was sharp, and Vegeta snapped his gaze to her again with a snarled exclamation. 

“You could at least thank me, you know?” Her lips were pursed and her brows drawn down. Vegeta was stunned. How dare she?

“ _Thank_ you? For simply doing you _job_?” Vegeta’s voice was low and furious. “How dare you? You sit here, safe in your lab, no risk to your life, completing your little technological assignments. You expect my thanks for something so small? When your life is so easy?”

“ _Easy?_ ” There was a new note in the woman’s tone, an icy ferocity previously absent, “you think my life is _easy?_ I’m trapped in some goddamn alien military-industrial complex, Kami knows how far from my planet, Kami knows if I’ll even ever _see my home again_ , let alone see my family, or anyone else I love and care for, and you say I have it _easy?_ ” Her eyes were bright, barely holding back tears, “At least you still have your planet!”

Her voice had been raw with the struggle to voice that frustration, and now she gulped for breath. Still glaring defiantly. Vegeta felt an inexplicable kinship to this alien female, clearly still fighting in some way even though on the face of it her battle had ended with her planet’s defeat at the hands of the PTO. 

“I wonder if that’s really true,” Vegeta muttered without thinking.

“What?” The woman was already working to suppress her frustration, paying sharp attention to Vegeta. “If what’s really true? You don’t mean what I said about your planet?”

The silence hung a moment, Vegeta neither confirming nor denying. He turned away from the woman’s sharp blue eyes, watching abstract patterns dance across a terminal on standby. 

A sigh from the woman broke the silence. “I guess I can see why you wouldn’t answer that.” She looked at Vegeta for a moment longer with that disconcertingly piercing gaze, then pressed her lips into a thin line and looked down at her workbench.

“I wish things were different,” she punctuated this with a soft exhalation of air, “for more people than just me, you know? But as they say, if wishes were fishes...”

“I have absolutely never heard anyone say that,” Vegeta interjected in irritation. “Where does your planet come up with these bizarre sayings?”

She laughed as if she hadn’t meant to, a brief burst that cut off abruptly. “Good question. I guess our planet’s full of strange stuff, looking from the outside.” She frowned slightly. “Especially about wishes. Wishes were fishes, a dime for every time, I wish I were…” she swallowed, “bring all seven together, and your wish will come true.” 

Her string of words made no sense to Vegeta, but somehow the last phrase had been given a different weight from the others. “Seven of what?”

The woman’s — Bulma, she had called herself — smile was closed this time, a contrast to most of her previous expressions in Vegeta’s company. “Let’s call it a fairytale. Only for the worthy.”

“What the hell is a fairytale?” Vegeta stopped, shook himself, suddenly exhausted. “Don’t bother answering that. Just send the technical details to Omeroe as you promised, so I can get this damn Rigel mess over with.” He turned and strode out of her lab without waiting for a further response, cloak of office swishing in his wake. 

* * *

Something was chiming softly in Vegeta’s ear. He opened his eyes blearily, coming out of the light stasis he’d used for his several-day journal back to Planet Vegeta from Frieza Planet 572. What was chiming?

As his eyes regained the ability to focus, Vegeta realized there was an unread message logged on the ruby screen of his scouter. The source of the chiming. Shaking his arm awake to manipulate the scouter’s controls, he checked the message.

“?” Was the single character that the message contained. The sender was Kakarot. 

Vegeta ground his teeth together and sent a call.

“Hel—“ 

“What the FUCK Kakarot?” Vegeta cut the other Saiyan off with a growl.

“Oh, Vegeta! I wasn’t sure you’d call back, so you did get my messa—“

“MESSAGE? You call that a MESSAGE? You sent one goddamn symbol! It’s not even a word! Why the FUCK did you wake me out of stasis for a _question mark_ ” 

“Well,” Kakarot paused here, apparently waiting to see if Vegeta had more snarling in store. When Vegeta forced himself to remain silent, Kakarot continued, “I was wondering if you’re around. But if you were in stasis, I guess you’re space traveling.”

“Yes.” Vegeta bit off the short reply, still insulted by Kakarot’s ‘message’. “Why. Did. You. Send it.”

“I’m shipping out on another mission tonight,” Kakarot’s voice was softer, almost apologetic, “was wondering if. Well. If you needed to let off more stress, let’s say.”

Kakarot was being far more coy than during their last scouter call. Perhaps he was worried about being overheard, or was conscious that the call might not be completely private. 

”I don’t have time to come running to you just because you’re shipping out, Kakarot.” Vegeta wished that there was time, but it would be hours yet before he landed on his home planet. It would be well into the night cycle by then. Even if Kakarot hadn’t launched, he’d be prepping. 

“Right. When do you,” Kakarot hesitated, then seemed to decide it wasn’t actually worth asking when Vegeta landed. “I guess maybe another day. Or something.”

Vegeta opened his mouth to respond, but Kakarot had hung up. That was unexpected. Why had he hung up? Why had he wanted to talk to Vegeta in the first place? That had to be what the odd and offensive message was, simply a cue for Vegeta to call. Had Kakarot wanted to speak with Vegeta simply for the sake of it, before he headed back into battle? Perhaps something had shifted between them, after Chroys. 

It had been unexpectedly pleasant waking up in Kakarot’s bed several mornings ago. Even though Kakarot’s screeching alarm had woken them both in a most displeasing fashion, the unfamiliar feeling of being wrapped in warmth by someone he inexplicably trusted had left Vegeta hungering for a repeat. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept so soundly. During the night Kakarot had somehow wrapped himself around Vegeta without breaking Vegeta’s sleep, even going so far as to wrap his tail snugly around Vegeta’s waist. At least it had left Kakarot within easy arm’s reach of the offensive alarm come morning. Vegeta was attempting to firmly push the memory of that embrace aside so he didn’t hunger for it, but he wasn’t succeeding. 

And now Kakarot was shipping out again. In the red-tinged light of his spacepod, Vegeta curled forward slightly to rest his forehead on his folded forearms, against his knees. Kakarot was shipping out again, probably to another near-unwinnable battle on a planet or moon or fucking asteroid that likely had no strategic worth. Trash for Frieza to dispose of. Vegeta shivered as his mind conjured images of wine swirling in a glass, a cold laugh. He tried not to think about how small a game piece he was, curled in his pod within the vast expanse of space. 

Kakarot was an even smaller piece in Frieza’s game. Vegeta swallowed hard, and tried and failed not think about how easily his newfound, illicit comfort could be reduced to a charred corpse. Feeling such personal concern for someone other than himself jarred his nerves, and threw the precarity of the Saiyan’s situation into sharper and more terrifying relief. 

He hoped with quiet desperation that Kakarot would return from this mission. And from the endless litany that would follow. 

* * *

Vegeta’s nerves were thoroughly frayed by the time he landed back on his home planet. Kakarot had featured heavily in his thoughts for the past several hours of return flight, Vegeta unable to forget the jolt of ice that had gone down his spine when his first read the Chorys mission reports. Perhaps he could find out where Kakarot would be stationed this time, at least learn if it were somewhere more sensible. Vegeta tried to school his face into calm as the door of his pod hissed open and he rose to meet the waiting attendants. It wouldn’t do for him to show an expression of concern. 

The attendants stood to attention as Vegeta brushed past, striding towards his quarters without greeting them. As usual. There was the familiar background hum of activity in the hanger beyond the landing pad, squads of Saiyan warriors conferring with technicians before squeezing into their pods and shipping out. Vegeta’s gaze swept the hangar searching for Kakarot, but his messy shock of hair wasn’t visible. Perhaps he had already left. The thought bothered Vegeta somehow, that Kakarot might leave, might die. Kakarot’s irreverence and cheeky attitude had made him seem somehow beyond the fray when Vegeta had first met him in the Root, but the Chorys incident had been a sharp awakening. There was no doubt that Kakarot dwelled in the same harsh reality as any other Saiyan. 

Vegeta’s distracted stride had finally brought him to the privacy of his own chambers, and he allowed himself to relax slightly as the doors clicked closed behind him. He found his hand rising toward his scouter, and froze himself. Did he really intend to call Kakarot? He had explicitly told Kakarot that he had no time. Kakarot might well be off planet already. But if he wasn’t, perhaps there was still time. Vegeta didn’t want Kakarot’s company, of course, and he certainly wouldn’t express concern to the other man’s face. Still, seeing Kakarot in person might be the best way to shake these grim thoughts out of Vegeta’s head, so that Vegeta could focus properly on the upcoming Rigel II mission. 

Wetting his suddenly dry lips, Vegeta keyed his scouter to place the call. The number of times it rang quickly stretched to insult. 

“Yeah?” Kakarot’s voice when he finally answered the call was distracted and irritated. “Identify.”

So Kakarot hadn’t checked who was calling before answering. “Do you have so many calls from restricted lines, Kakarot?”

Vegeta was greeted with only silence for a beat. “I thought you were busy,” Kakarot eventually responded, voice clipped.

The interaction was quickly leaving a sour taste in Vegeta’s mouth. What the hell was Kakarot’s problem all of a sudden?

“I found some time,” Vegeta returned through gritted teeth. 

“Well, I promised mine to someone else,” the background sounds filtering through the speaker were a mix of voices and shifting echoes. It sounded like Kakarot was on the move. “Turniz is real worried after Chorys, and I owe it to him to spend some time getting him ready before we ship out. I’m responsible for him, after all.”

“What?” Who the hell was Turniz? Why would Kakarot promise this Turniz his time, what did he mean he owed it to him? 

“Sorry, gotta go,” Kakarot ended the connection abruptly, though Vegeta heard someone calling Kakarot’s name in a relieved tone just before the audio cut. 

Sitting in stunned silence at his desk where he’d settled during the call, Vegeta contemplated the array of tablets and printouts in front of him without really focused on any of them. What the hell had that call been? Just what was the relation between Kakarot and Turniz? The closest tablet caught the light from the room’s orange-tinted ceiling fixture as Vegeta shifted to sit back in his seat. It would be a simple matter to search for Saiyans called Turniz to find out who the hell this was. Vegeta growled. It would also be utterly beneath him. As prince he had far more important things to do with his time. 

Vegeta shoved himself out of his chair, pacing the smooth stone floor of his living quarters back and forth between the desk and inset kitchen table. Though he had more space and individual rooms than Kakarot, it was still a short walk. There was no reason for him to stay in his quarters trying to decipher Kakarot when more important matters waited his attention. Rigel II, in particular, required preparation. Yes. He would begin on that immediately. Omeroe typically conducted technical discussions with Saiyans near the landing bay, saying that they preferred the wider space to their enclosed lab quarters when dealing with Saiyan tempers. And if Vegeta happened to see Kakarot pass by during the consult, that would simply be coincidence.

* * *

Omeroe had been delighted by the technical details the woman had sent. They’d nearly hit Vegeta in the face with a clipboard clutched in one enthusiastically waving tendril. Vegeta had left the Chioridan energetically directing the mixed Saiyan and off-planeter team in preparing the to receive shipments of the new technology from Frieza Planet 572. Preparations for return to Rigel II were well in hand.

The conversation with Omeroe had held Vegeta’s attention for an hour or so, but as he had no role in the shipment receipt he was now free to pace the launch bay. If that was what he chose to do. He could, of course, return to his quarters and start looking over the notes from warcouncil meetings that had been taken in his absence, but the grim task didn’t tempt him. 

Blazing red and violet lit the sky as Planet Vegeta’s sun slid toward the horizon, a typical show as the sun’s rays caught the myriad particulate matter suspended in the atmosphere. Vegeta sometimes wondered whether their original planet had contained so much dust and other matter in the air. Saiyans could tolerate the conditions well enough, but the grit got into everything, and dust storms could damage even a Saiyan’s lungs. 

“Enjoying the sunset, your highness?” The rough voice was familiar, and Vegeta froze instead of whirling to face Kakarot.

He certainly hadn’t been lingering on the lauchpad after his discussion with Omeroe in hopes of just such a meeting with Kakarot occurring.

“And what about you, Kakarot?” Vegeta continued to face the light display, back to Kakarot, “enjoying your last taste of home for a while?”

“I had a more interesting kind of tasting in mind earlier,” Kakarot’s tone was sharp.

Vegeta turned to glare at him. “You had made promises, you said.”

“Well sure, _after_ you said,” shaking his head, Kakarot frowned. “Forget it.”

Growling, Vegeta half-turned to angle himself away from Kakarot. There was something in the intensity of Kakarot’s gaze that made Vegeta feel uncomfortable and vaguely guilty. Even after turning, Vegeta could still feel Kakarot’s eyes on his face, could see Kakarot’s head slightly lowered in some semblance of deferment to his prince that seemed to instead convey stubbornness and frustration.

“I guess I’ll see you when I see you,” Kakarot’s words dropped softly into the overly loud silence, and he turned to go.

“Kakarot,” as Kakarot paused Vegeta struggled to think of something to follow his call with. “You’ll have to stay alive for that.”

The tip of a canine tooth gleamed as Kakarot grinned back at Vegeta. “Don’t worry. I’m good at staying alive.”

Before Vegeta could protest the assumption that he was _worrying_ , Kakarot had melted into the bustle of the launchpad. Had Vegeta sounded concerned? Damn it all, he must have, for Kakarot to respond so. What the hell had he been thinking, letting on that he actually gave a crap whether Kakarot lived or died? He was getting soft. 

“Prince Vegeta?” The voice was similar to Kakarot’s, but the tone was far more submissive. Shit. Vegeta knew who that was. How the hell long had he been lurking?

“What is it, Raditz,” Vegeta turned to face the newest member of his Royal Guard, and wondered again how the man even functioned with that much hair. How could he even fit it all into a spacepod? 

Raditz shifted his weight uneasily, deferring to his prince but also clearly about to pursue something he shouldn’t. “I was just wondering what you were talking to my little brother about. I didn’t realize you knew him.”

Shit shit shit. So Raditz had noticed. It didn’t sound like he had actually heard any of their words, so he’d escaped the worst scenario, but this was still a mess. If it was known he had some connection to Kakarot, people might begin to look more closely. See things they shouldn’t.

“A routine check,” Vegeta kept his voice clipped and irritated. “No business of yours.”

Raditz frowned and opened his mouth, probably to say something true yet inadvisable such as pointing out that there were no routine checks that would involve Vegeta talking to Kakarot. Then Raditz paused, closed his mouth, shrugged.

“My mistake, then,” Vegeta did not like what sounded like a suddenly knowing note in Raditz’s tone. He must be imagining it. The hairball wasn’t that observant, was he? Raditz lifted a hand to push it through the hair at the base of his skull. “As you say, it’s none of my business.”

Vegeta remained silent for a beat, trying to compose a reply. He thought he saw Raditz’s lips twitch before his expression smoothed into deference again, then Raditz turned and ambled off with an unhurried stride. 

_Fuck_. Had Vegeta’s reply been too obviously a lie? Had Raditz guess the real reason for their conversation? Vegeta realized with a start that he’d sunk his teeth into the thumb of his right glove, still unable to completely quash his childhood stress response. He yanked his hand downward and cast his gaze around slightly wildly to see if anyone had noticed. An unfortunate technician looked up at just the wrong moment and caught his eye briefly.

“You,” Vegeta spat out, heading toward the suddenly terrified technician, “you should be focused on your work. Have you such an abundance of free time that you need more tasks?”

“N-no, your highness,” the technician cowered back, bewildered. Unsurprisingly, since he had been carrying some kind of mechanical equipment across the launch pad when Vegeta singled him out to accuse him of negligence. 

“Pay more attention to your tasks, then,” Vegeta snapped as he strode rapidly away from the launch pad, moving as quickly as he could without looking like he was actually running away. He needed to get the hell out of here and regain his composure before this mess got any worse. 

It was a relief when the doors to the hanger clicked shut behind him, and Vegeta moved silently down the palace’s less populated hallways toward his own quarters. What the hell had he been thinking, having a friendly conversation with a third class warrior like Kakarot in such a visible location? It was a sure fire way to start exactly the kind of rumors he didn’t need his father hearing. His throat vibrated with a constrained growl, he wasn’t even sure who he directed it at. 

He would need to be less familiar with Kakarot in future. Assuming, of course, that Kakarot survived and continued to even be on the planet in future. An icy feeling settled in Vegeta’s stomach again. Kakarot had seemed confident, however. They’d surely have more time for ‘booty calls’, as Kakarot had put it. If Kakarot survived this mission, perhaps Vegeta would even humor him by staying the night at Kakarot’s place again. The request had been Kakarot’s after all, and that meant Vegeta didn’t need to acknowledge that he himself had enjoyed it.

Kakarot was good at staying alive, he’d said. Vegeta hoped he wasn’t just being cocky.


	6. Chapter 6

If it weren’t for the ugly, charred landscape of Rigel II’s surface, it would have almost been a stunning sight to behold.

Vegeta fell still, hovering in silence as the invisible shields suddenly burst into view across the landscape, slowly dissolving away in a glimmering, iridescent wave. It had worked just as the woman had promised, more smoothly than he could have possibly hoped for. It had only been hours before that Vegeta and his soldiers had fanned out across the planet’s surface, each armed with one of the technician’s shield detectors fastened to their scouters—and just as promised, the entire shield defense system had lit up, mapped out clearer than any star chart.

Vegeta still wasn’t sure what a Christmas tree was, but he would be sure to tell the alien technician that her predictions had been accurate.

But that would have to wait. As strongly as he could already taste victory on his tongue, Vegeta still had a mission to complete, and a voice was already gibbering in his ear through one of the comm channels on his scouter.

“Lord Vegeta, the shieldbreaker—” It was Omeroe, their words babbling together in excitement. “It’s working perfectly, the entire grid is just— _vaporizing_ —”

“We’ve noticed,” Vegeta growled, hand pressed to his scouter, patching into the main comm frequency. “Raditz, maintain your position near the shieldbreaker—I want that thing coming back with us in one piece. Skallyun, your squad is still charged with securing prisoners, at any cost. Everyone else—” Vegeta licked his lips, watching as the last of the ki shields melted before him. “You know your orders.”

Vegeta ceased his transmission. He narrowed his eyes, squinting through the acrid smoke of the planet’s atmosphere, and in the distance, he could see his soldiers materializing from their hiding spots, assuming formation, and rushing toward the confirmed Rigellian outposts.

Vegeta wondered if there would be a single, miserable Rigellian left alive by the time the campaign was over.

“Ready to dispatch some Rigellians, sire?”

Vegeta glanced away from the horizon, and found Nappa’s towering form had lumbered up to his side. Nappa wouldn’t have been his first choice as his right-hand for this mission—it would have made more sense to plant him on guard duty back at the shieldbreaker instead of Raditz. But after Raditz’s inability to mind his own damn business back at the launchpads, Vegeta was willing to make a small tactical sacrifice to avoid him entirely.

“Hardly,” Vegeta muttered. “None of the intel we have suggests the Rigellians themselves are particularly capable fighters. Their tech is their only defense. Without their shield generators, it’s only a matter of time before we take out their energy weapons.”

Nappa shrugged, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “Intel’s been wrong before.”

A list of worlds sprung immediately to Vegeta’s mind—Rixshing, Chorys, too many to count—and his mouth curled into bitter grimace.

“A valid point,” he said. “But I wouldn’t get too excited—I expect this to be a routine bugstomping mission.”

“Fair enough,” Nappa said, still smirking. “Then let’s get to bustomping.”

And before Vegeta could reply, Nappa had lifted off, flying in the direction of the Rigellian bases, eager to join his fellow Saiyans.

Vegeta was slower to join him, but eventually followed in his wake.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Hours later, after Rigel II had finally fallen, Vegeta didn’t even get the chance to relish his victory. Not for long.

He was back in his private quarters on the ship, lying in his bunk—though sleep evaded him. Even as his eyelids grew heavy, he couldn’t tear himself away from the glow of his tablet screen and the constant scroll of recent mission reports. More critical failures, from more sectors than he could count. Ships and pods wrecked beyond salvage, so many resources lost that the economic toll of these missions was quickly beginning to rival the death toll, which was already verging on unfathomable. Vegeta couldn’t stop poring over the lists of Saiyan dead almost obsessively, like there was some meaning to be found in the chaos of it—as if reading the names could somehow turn every dead Saiyan soldier into something more than a fleeting statistic. But there wasn’t, and it only left an acidic taste in Vegeta’s mouth that even the success of Rigel II couldn’t wash away.

Vegeta’s attention gradually drifted elsewhere, until he was skimming through reports of more routine missions—it wasn’t long before Kakarot’s name appeared, and despite himself, Vegeta couldn’t just skim past it. He dug hungrily into the service record—apparently Kakarot’s squad had been briefly dispatched to Nevymit, some blistering desert world on the inner rim, and it had been another close call. Yet more injuries—Vegeta scowled at the list of medic reports documented for each squad member before he suddenly noticed the name Turniz.

Vegeta lifted an eyebrow, remembering his last conversation with Kakarot. This ‘Turniz’ was a squadmate, then. Someone close to Kakarot—

A sudden ping from Vegeta’s scouter interrupted that particular train of thought.

Vegeta grabbed his scouter from the shelf above his bunk, wondering what moron could possibly be messaging him at this hour. Immediately, he had one particular moron in mind. He swore to the goddess Soli, if it was a single question mark, and nothing else—

But the message was something else entirely.

_On behalf of Lord Frieza, you are ordered to promptly report to his flagship, currently in orbit around Planet Vegeta. You and your party are expected to board no later than standard hour 1100. Further details to follow._

_—Vice Admiral Zarbon_

Vegeta scowled at the message. Gods, had he not done enough? Now the fucking lizard wanted to see him face to face in order to, what, debrief him personally?

Vegeta chewed the inside of cheek, simmering with a barely-contained fury as he quickly forwarded the message to Nappa and Raditz, adding an addendum of his own.

_Looks like we have an audience with the bastard himself. You two will be escorting me. Meet me in the podbay in three hours._

Then Vegeta tossed his scouter aside, and his tablet along with it, and slammed a button on the bulkhead to dim the lights before he tossed over on his side. He only had a few hours to get what little sleep he could.

Somehow he felt it wouldn’t help either way.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Vegeta’s pod raced through the void, and even under hard acceleration, he felt somehow weightless in the small vessel. He blamed it on the spanning vista that soared beneath him—the red, bright expanse of Planet Vegeta’s surface curving into a horizon that stretched too far for him to see, framed in stars and endless blackness, twin suns rising beyond it, and then Frieza’s ship superimposed over it all like a hideous scar.

The flagship loomed larger each second as Vegeta’s pod made its approach. To Vegeta’s eye, it was an ugly, bulbous thing that looked less like a spacecraft to Vegeta, and more like a glistening parasite floating hungrily at the edge of his planet’s atmosphere.

It had been a long time since Vegeta had had the misfortune of boarding it.

His pod, and Nappa and Raditz’s in tow, docked with one of the ship’s airlocks, well on schedule according to Vegeta’s scouter. As soon as the airlock finished cycling, Vegeta crawled out of his pod, stretching out his muscles as he pulled himself to his full height, and in the corner of his eye, he saw Nappa and Raditz doing the same. Nappa looked vaguely bored as he straightened his armor and curled his tail around his waist. Raditz, meanwhile, looked oddly nervous—he shifted his weight uncomfortably in the small space, his tail twitching behind him.

“I, uh, I’ve never been on this ship before,” he stammered when he caught Vegeta watching him.

“Somehow I doubt it’s the ship that’s bothering you,” Vegeta said flatly.

Raditz looked away, then rubbed at the back of his neck in a gesture that reminded Vegeta infuriatingly of his brother—and the last thing he needed to think about right now was Kakarot, of all people.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I’ve… never actually met Frieza face-to-face before.”

Vegeta rolled his eyes. “Then I’ll catch you up to speed: he’s even uglier in person.”

Nappa snorted, and Raditz opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by the hissing of the airlock’s inner hatch opening. The group turned simultaneously to face the door, only to find Zarbon waiting there for them.

“Zarbon,” Vegeta said, suppressing the grimace that threatened to pull at his lips. “How thoughtful of you to come and escort us to Frieza personally.”

“Rigel II’s made you even more insufferable than usual, I see,” Zarbon said, in a voice that rode the fine edge between icy and melodic, a hateful scowl marring his otherwise elegant features. He spread an arm out, gesturing to the corridor beyond. “I suggest you follow me promptly—you wouldn’t want to keep his Lordship waiting.”

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Vegeta said, passing through the open hatch, Nappa and Raditz following closely behind, Zarbon taking the lead.

They moved quickly through the ship corridors, Zarbon setting a brisk pace in front of them. Few other PTO soldiers crossed their paths as they moved through the ship, but the ones that did gave them a wide berth—due to the presence of Saiyans, or Zarbon, Vegeta wasn’t sure.

By the time they reached their destination, Vegeta was already sick of every corner of the ship.

Zarbon guided them into the throne room—there was no other way to describe it—and stood guard near the door as Vegeta filed inside, Nappa and Raditz mere footsteps behind him. The room was ostentatious—an absurd waste of space even for a flagship of this size. But the details of the room were obscured in the dim light, and completely overshadowed by the imposing, circular window that took up almost the entirety of the far wall, like a massive blister glimpsing into the void beyond. Vegeta thought such a design was foolish—a giant weak spot glimmering in the hull of the ship for all to see—and he would have relished the thought of shattering it with his own ki if he didn’t know that Frieza’s species was stubbornly resilient to the vacuum of space.

Vegeta tucked the thought away as his gaze was drawn to the focal point of the room—the dais and throne set before the window. Frieza stood beside the seat, his back turned to his visitors as he surveyed the view before him, one hand swirling a crystal wine goblet as his tail lazily carved out a figure-eight motion in the air.

“My Lord,” Zarbon announced from the entryway, clearing his throat. “Prince Vegeta and his retinue, as requested.”

Frieza turned slightly, just enough to glimpse his visitors from the corner of his eye. Vegeta kneeled before him, swallowing down the surge of disgust that the action entailed, and gave a sharp glance at Nappa and Raditz to follow suit.

Frieza flashed Vegeta a smirk as he turned completely. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you in person, Prince Vegeta. You look well.”

Vegeta bristled at the way Frieza said the word “Prince,” stressing it with a condescending edge that was almost too subtle to notice. The sarcastic compliment only deepened the insult—Vegeta knew he looked anything but well, haggard from space travel and sleep deprivation, with circles under his eyes so dark that even the lens of his scouter couldn’t obscure it.

“Thank you for extending us this audience, Lord Frieza” Vegeta said, trying to unclench his jaw enough to fake graciousness. “To what do we owe this invitation?”

Frieza took a seat on his throne, and rested his cheek against one palm as he took a deep dip from his wine.

“At ease,” he drawled around the lip of the cup, and Vegeta was relieved to rise back to his full height. “I’ve welcomed you here to congratulate you on your success on Rigel II.”

“Thank you,” Vegeta said, teeth gritted, wishing that Frieza would hurry up and get to the fucking point of why he was really here.

“And to think of how many soldiers I wasted on that campaign,” Frieza mused, swirling his glass again, “when a simple technical solution was all it took in the end.”

Vegeta’s mouth twitched. He could feel a throbbing beginning in his temple.

“Had I been given adequate time, and resources, and intel, we would not have suffered the losses on Rigel II that we did,” he said before he could stop himself, and he could sense Nappa and Raditz stiffening at his side, alarmed. “But it was my mission. My men and women. I accept accountability for our losses.”

“Of course.” Frieza’s brows narrowed, his expression darkening as he looked down into his wine. A smirk stretched across his mouth, his dark, thin lips a hideous gash set against icy white skin. “I took great interest in reading over your mission report. Very compelling.”

Vegeta lifted an eyebrow, and opened his mouth to ask why, but Frieza cut him off before he could speak.

“The Rigellian technology—you seem to have a theory that it was too sophisticated for them to have developed on their own.”

Vegeta’s tail threatened to twitch loose, but he tightened it around his waist until it almost hurt, as if he could somehow keep the simmering hostility inside him coiled up that way. He licked his lips before he spoke, choosing his words carefully.

“Yes. We’re still interrogating the captive Rigellians, but from what my intelligence officers and technicians have managed—”

“Oh?” Frieza said, his eyes narrowing almost to slits. “Are we trusting lowly _technicians_ now?”

“It was a technician who turned this battle in our favor,” Vegeta countered, trying to keep his voice even.

“No matter,” Frieza sneered, taking another drink from his cup. “The point is—your implication is not lost on me.”

“And what implication would that be, my Lord?”

“Insurrection.” Frieza’s voice had gone cold. “Another seed of rebellion, taking root right beneath our noses. Isn’t that right, Vegeta?”

Vegeta fell silent for several beats too long before he finally responded.

“Yes,” he said bluntly, ignoring the way his subordinates were shifting uncomfortably beside him. “That seems to be the most likely conclusion.”

“I’m not clueless. I’ve heard the rumors—the whisperings,” Frieza went on. “There isn’t a corner of my empire where murmurs of rebellion haven’t been stirred up.” Frieza lifted his glass, using it to gesture at the wide window behind him. “I’m sure you could find sympathizers lurking on your own planet, if you cared to look.”

“I’m not aware of any rebel cells on Planet Vegeta,” Vegeta said, his lip curling into a snarl.

“Merely hypothesizing, Prince Vegeta. No need to be defensive,” Frieza chided, smirking again. “But needless to say, your work on Rigel II has indeed been illuminating. And I have my own theories as to how such technology might have fallen into Rigellian hands.”

“Then you must have figured out by now that there are agents working against you from the inside,” Vegeta said.

“An inevitability,” Frieza said, still smirking, but Vegeta didn’t miss the way his fingers curled tighter around the stem of his glass, a flicker of his anger sneaking past his otherwise frigid exterior. “And worse—I have reason to believe that such agents are likely working with the Rixshings.”

And suddenly, Vegeta realized where this was going. His hands clenched at his sides.

“I—I don’t know anything about that.”

“The energy weapons your soldiers recovered on Rigel II bear some resemblance to the ones retrieved from the Rixshing system. Too much to attribute to mere coincidence,” Frieza said, pausing to examine his nails as if he couldn’t even be bothered to look directly at Vegeta. “And it’s long been suspected that there’s a considerable base of rebellion operations hidden beneath Rixshing’s surface—information we would have confirmed by now if you hadn’t failed so spectacularly during your last mission there. But lucky for you—” Frieza’s gaze cut back to Vegeta, and Vegeta had to steady the tremor of rage coursing down his spine “—your recent success with Rigel II has made me feel… magnanimous. I think you’ve earned a chance to redeem yourself, Vegeta.”

In the corner of his eye, Vegeta caught Raditz and Nappa exchanging an open look of horror. But he was too busy suppressing his own fury to pay them any mind.

“Redeem myself,” he echoed back, forcing the words through gritted teeth.

“I plan to redouble our efforts at Rixshing… and you, Vegeta, will have the privilege of spearheading the campaign once again.”

Before he could stop himself, Vegeta stepped toward Frieza’s throne, his breath hitching with rage.

“Lord Frieza, if you’ll please consider—”

“I suggest you take advantage of your shore leave on Planet Vegeta. I suspect you’ll need all the rest you can get. You’re dismissed, Prince Vegeta.”

And with that, Frieza stood up from his throne, waving Vegeta away as he turned his back to gaze instead at the window beyond. Behind him, Vegeta could hear Zarbon opening the doors to the throne chamber, and Nappa and Raditz turning to leave, but Vegeta remained rooted where he stood.

“With all due respect, Lord Frieza,” Vegeta said, each word careful and slow, his jaw clenched painfully, “I have already lost enough good soldiers to the Rixshing campaign. Unless you have a dramatic change in strategy in mind, I anticipate nothing but failure if we engage that front this soon after—”

But Frieza continued to wave his hand dismissively as he took another sip from his drink. “I assure you Zarbon will be in contact with you with more detailed orders. You’re _dismissed._ ”

“No.”

Frieza stiffened mid-drink, turning back to face him. “Excuse me?”

Vegeta knew that the only smart thing to do would be to apologize and promptly leave. But rationality seemed like a distant abstraction, boiled away in the violent heat of the rage rising within him.

“We have done everything you have asked of us,” Vegeta said, his voice tremulous as it grew louder. “I have sent countless numbers of my troops to die—sent on missions without adequate resources, or intel, or support, set up for failure on missions of little to no strategic value. Saiyans are warriors, we live for battle, and I expect loss and death in any war—but we are not cannon fodder, Frieza. If you continue at this rate, with this _recklessness_ —you won’t have a Saiyan army left to command.”

Frieza’s cold expression had fallen away entirely. His smirk had vanished from his face, his lips pulled pulled back into a disgusted snarl.

“You dare to stand here before me,” Frieza said, advancing slowly in Vegeta’s direction, his tail whipping sharply behind him. “And lecture me about war strategy?”

But Vegeta refused to back down as Frieza closed in on him, his tail bristling around his waist as he stood taller.

Nappa spoke up from somewhere behind him. “Sire, it might be wise if—”

“I don’t intend to lecture you about anything,” Vegeta said, cutting Nappa off, his glare locking with Frieza’s. “All I ask—is for a reprieve—for my soldiers to have time to regroup, properly train—”

“You ask for too much,” Frieza hissed, and as he closed the last few steps remaining between himself and Vegeta, he swung his arm forward, smashing his glass against Vegeta’s face.

The impact surprised Vegeta more than it hurt, and he was only distantly aware of a stinging pain down the length of his cheekbone where crystal shards cut into his skin. He stumbled, stunned, and was rewarded for his failure to react by a hand gripping him by the roots of his hair and pulling.

“You forget your station, you insolent monkey,” Frieza snarled in his face, his other fist colliding with Vegeta’s cheek, gouging the shards deeper into his face. Vegeta let out a sharp cry of pain, and Frieza answered with another punch, and Vegeta felt his nose break beneath Frieza’s fist. Frieza raised his hand for another hit, but this time Vegeta raised his arm fast enough to block it, and Frieza hissed, swinging Vegeta down by the hair until he slammed into the marble-hard floor.

Vegeta groaned, and tried to push himself to his hands and knees, only to have Frieza knock him back down with a sharp kick to the ribs. Vegeta’s head was still ringing from the first blows, but he was vaguely aware of Raditz shouting something and rushing forward, only to be shouted at by Nappa, who pulled him back.

But Frieza paid the other Saiyans no mind, delivering another round of kicks to Vegeta’s side until Vegeta was certain he had shattered as many ribs as possible.

“You dare to question me—” Frieza punctuated his words with another kick. “You dare _challenge me_ —” Vegeta made an effort to crawl away, but Frieza’s foot stomped down at the base of his spine, pinning him in place. “—this is what your misplaced arrogance has _earned_ you.”

A strangled noise of pain gurgled in Vegeta’s throat, drowned out by the blood draining into his mouth from his shattered nose. He tried to pull himself forward with his forearms, but suddenly Frieza had lunged forward, and grabbed one of his arms at the wrist. Before Vegeta could attempt to tear it away, Frieza had already pulled back, wrenching his arm further than it could go, and Vegeta could hear his shoulder dislocating before he felt it.

A guttural cry escaped Vegeta’s throat, and Frieza released his arm, only to grab Vegeta by the hair once again. He used his grip to slam Vegeta’s face into the floor—Vegeta felt his scouter smash against his brow, more shards of glass embedded into his flesh—and Frieza repeated the motion, over and over, the skin of Vegeta’s face splitting open with every impact against the floor.

“I hope this lesson is getting through to you,” Frieza taunted, and Vegeta felt talon-like nails slide down his scalp until they had dug into the base of his neck, and suddenly Vegeta found himself being lifted up, and the entire world seemed to spin around him as Frieza dragged his limp form across the floor, finally slamming him into the hull. Vegeta’s legs buckled immediately, and he would have collapsed to the floor had Frieza’s tail not suddenly whipped around and pinned him in place by the throat.

“The only thing more worthless to me than a monkey—” Frieza shouted in his face as his fists struck Vegeta across the jaw, then his sides, his stomach, each blow forcing horrible, rasping noises from Vegeta’s lungs as he coughed and sputtered on his own blood, “—is a monkey who doesn’t know its _place_.”

Vegeta was half blinded, one eye swollen shut from the debris of his shattered scouter, the other a swimming blur from the concussive blows to his skull, but he could suddenly make out the form of Zarbon approaching Frieza from behind.

“Lord Frieza—” he said, but his voice sounded distant to Vegeta’s ears, all of Vegeta’s senses dulled by the pain and darkness quickly closing in on him

But Frieza ignored Zarbon’s interruption—Vegeta felt another blow to the gut, and coughed up another mouthful of blood. “ _Do you understand me, Vegeta?_ ”

Zarbon tried again. “Lord Frieza—”

“What is it, Zarbon?” Frieza finally barked, his tail’s grip tightening around Vegeta’s throat as his head snapped to the side to face Zarbon.

“My—my Lord, I’m receiving a message from the bridge—the ship is due to leave, w-we’re falling behind schedule—”

“Outstanding,” Frieza hissed, his tail suddenly uncoiling from Vegeta’s throat. Vegeta collapsed wordlessly, gasping for breath as he collided again with the floor. “Not only have you disrespected me, Vegeta, now you’ve made me _late_.”

Frieza punctuated his rage with one final kick to Vegeta’s side. Vegeta coughed out a smothered noise of pain, too weakened to scream or wail or to find the breath it would take to curse the gods for keeping him conscious for this long.

“Zarbon, see to it these repulsive monkeys are escorted off my ship immediately,” Frieza snapped. “And under no circumstance is our little Prince here to be whisked off into a medtank—I want him to feel these injuries for as long as it takes for this lesson to sink into that tiny, simian brain of his.”

“Certainly, Lord Frieza, but— ”

“I mean it—any medic caught tending to him in a medtank will be executed by me, personally. Make that known.”

After that, Vegeta realized that Frieza must have finally left, because then he felt Nappa and Raditz suddenly upon him, touching him, trying to pull him from the floor.

“Sire—hold on, we—we’re going to get you to Planet Vegeta as quickly as possible—” That was Nappa’s voice, though to Vegeta it sounded like he was far away and underwater, his words faint and garbled.

“All this blood—gods, Nappa, how are we even gonna get him to the pods—”

“Shut up, Raditz! Just move!”

Vegeta tried to murmur his agreement, but the darkness finally took him before he could even say a word.


	7. Chapter 7

Fuck sand, and fuck Nevymit. Kakarot’s bones felt heavy. He collapsed onto his sofa, let his head fall heavily back. Three showers later, and he still felt the grit and blood from Nevymit’s harsh battle ground into his skin. Another mission where his squad made it out by the skin of their teeth, though thank Soli there were no major injuries this time. Luck, more than superior strength. Kakarot hissed, too tired to even growl properly. They’d needed more firepower, more intel. Again, they’d had neither. Did damned Frieza _want_ his troops to die?

Someone slammed repeatedly on his door. Kakarot jolted before rising to answer it, berating himself for not hearing footfalls in the corridor. 

Raditz’s bulk filled the doorway, his face sickly and pale against the dark mass of his hair. The pit dropped out of Kakarot’s stomach. What the hell had happened to make his big brother look like that?

“Are mom and dad okay?” Kakarot spilled his question as Raditz wobbled across the room to collapse on Kakarot’s recently vacated sofa. Pale as Raditz was, his hair seemed to take up more space than his person. 

“They’re fine,” Raditz leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, burying his hands in his hair. “They’re fine. For now. Fuck. Got any beer?”

“Sure.” Kakarot tried to force some of the tension from his shoulders, grabbed two beers. He dropped onto the small sofa next to Raditz, squishing them together. “What’s got you?”

Raditz blew out a shaky breath, and drained half his beer without acknowledging Kakarot’s question before lowering the bottle to stare blankly at the door across the room. “Frieza’s a fucking monster.”

Kakarot inhaled sharply. “So you met him?”

“Wouldn’t really say met. Had the misfortune to end up in the same room as him.” Raditz shuddered, tail fur bristling in unease. “He doesn’t give a shit about us, does he?”

“How the hell should I know?” The question hit uncomfortably close to Kakarot’s earlier thoughts, reminded him of conversations he’d had with Vegeta. “I’ve never even laid eyes on Frieza, you’d know more than me.”

Raditz was starting to look physically ill. “Well, then, I’m certain. He gives less than a shit about us. Hell, he’d probably celebrate if we all died out. That fucking sadist,” Raditz paused to swallow hard, “he enjoys dealing out pain and humiliation.”

“He didn’t go after you, though.” 

Raditz shook his head. “I’d be dead if he had. Even—“ Raditz abruptly cut himself off. 

“Even what?”

“Forget it.” Raditz stood and handed Kakarot his empty bottle. “Thanks for the beer. I gotta go.”

“Raditz,” Kakarot’s brother paused with his hand on the door, “why did you come here?”

“I just. Fuck, I just needed a friendly face, you know?” 

“Who did he go after?” Unease curled incessantly in Kakarot’s stomach. “It was a Saiyan. The only Saiyans that would be near Frieza himself, those’d be the Royal Guard. And the Royalty.”

Raditz turned back toward Kakarot with narrowed eyes. “You have some special interest in the Royalty, Kakarot? Looked like you were having a pretty deep conversation with the Prince before you shipped out to Nevymit.”

Shit. Raditz had seen that? Vegeta was going to be pissed. “It was just a conversation.”

“I hope so,” Raditz frowned at him, “could get dangerous otherwise. Especially since—“ he cut himself off again.

That was twice now that Raditz had almost spilled something he shouldn’t. Whatever he was keeping confidential was burning a hole in him. “How badly did Frieza injure the Prince, then?”

The blood drained from Raditz’s face, and he leaned back against the door to steady himself. Even though Kakarot knew his brother wasn’t as tough as his size suggested, it was still alarming to watch. “I thought he was going to bleed out on the damned floor,” Raditz whispered, “and if you let on that I told you that, it’s both our heads.” 

“Bleed out? But he’s,” the strongest of us, Kakarot thought. 

“He might as well have been a rag doll to Frieza,” Raditz wrapped his arms around himself and stared at the floor. “Thank Soli he’s still breathing, but it’s touch and go.”

“You mean it’s too bad even for a healing tank?” Kakarot’s heart hammered in his chest.

“No, I mean he’s forbidden from using a healing tank,” Raditz looked back up at Kakarot to frown. “I _really_ shouldn’t be telling you all this.”

“I’ll keep my mouth shut.” He was shaking now, furious tremors running through him. Kakarot struggled to regain control. Frieza had beaten Vegeta to the brink of death then refused him use of a healing tank? If that was how he treated Saiyan royalty, then what the hell were the rest of them? 

It was more than rage, simmering under Kakarot’s skin. He needed to see Vegeta, feel under his own hands that Vegeta was still breathing. The thought that Vegeta might actually die froze his blood. 

“Make sure that you do,” Raditz placed his hand back on the door, frowned when Kakarot looked at him without focus. “Keep your mouth _shut_ Kakarot.” Opening the door, Raditz added, “and stay the hell away from the palace.”

Where Vegeta would be. Kakarot watched the door click shut and tried to steady his erratic breathing.

* * *

“Kakarot!” Arisad threw an arm heavily around his shoulders, eyes alight with glee. “You’re holding out on us!”

“I would never,” Kakarot protested, shaking off the haze of beer and bar noise as he met Arisad’s eyes. The twisting concern for Vegeta remained, as unshakable now as it had been hours ago. “What do you think I’m even holding?”

Ulle tucked herself under Kakarot’s free arm and grinned up at him, delicate features a contrast to her sharp teeth. “You don’t really wanna make us say it, Captain.”

“You know, Ulle, I think he’s going to make us say it.” Kakarot was pinned between the two of them, Arisad towering to his right while Ulle wrapped a compact arm firmly around his waist on his left. They looked too amused for anything good. 

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Kakarot kept his voice slow and easy. It was true. There was only one thing he’d been keeping from his squad, since his run-ins with Vegeta were more than Kakarot’s secret alone, and there was no reason they’d pick up on that.

“You, my captain,” Ulle paused for dramatic effect, “are lovesick.” 

Kakarot choked on the beer he’d foolishly been taking a sip of, and Arisad threw her head back and roared with laughter. “You are! That reaction just confirms it!” She pounded him on the back as he coughed. “Easy there, can’t have you done in by something as weak as beer after making it back from all those hardass missions.”

The background roar of drinking and talking Saiyans filled the Branch with unchanged pitch. No one was paying them any more attention than usual. Still, Kakarot felt exposed in the warm red lighting, pinned between his squad mates to his sides and a table to his front. He wiped beer away from his mouth, and noticed Ulle and Arisad exchanging worried glances. 

“Shit, Kakarot, I didn’t think you’d look that pale over being called out,” Arisad frowned at him. 

Ulle detached herself from Kakarot’s side, giving him space he didn’t realize he’d craved. He drew in a breath that was shakier than it should be. Hopping onto the table to bring her closer to Kakarot’s eye level, Ulle placed a hand on Kakarot’s shoulder. “We won’t push it, then.” She glanced at Arisad. “Will we?”

“Nah, we won’t push it,” Arisad agreed, still looking unusually concerned. “But you’d better sort yourself out, Kakarot. You’ve been distracted all night.” The two of them stared intently at Kakarot for a moment. “That kind of distraction could get you killed next mission, you know? Better not leave things hanging, we could ship out any day now.”

It was true. They’d barely been back for a day, but there was hardly any time between missions now. And damned if he didn’t want to see Vegeta before shipping back out. If he could figure out how the hell to get into the palace without causing a fuss. 

“Relax, you two,” Kakarot smiled easily at them, voice light and steady. “When have I ever let myself get distracted on a mission? Worry about yourselves instead.” 

Arisad’s arm tensed against Kakarot’s shoulders as she looked at Ulle, and Kakarot realized she was remembering Ulle’s near miss back on Chorys. It had hit her hard, having her mate come so close to death, and guilt churned Kakarot’s stomach for reminding them of it.

“I’ll stay on top of it, promise,” Kakarot filled the silence. “And since we haven’t got more orders to ship out yet, how about another round to celebrate?” 

Arisad and Ulle cheered in agreement, and Kakarot slipped away to get their refills. Seemed like they all three needed the distraction.

* * *

Vegeta wasn’t answering his scouter. Kakarot fidgeted, listened to the sandstorm hissing against the window behind him. It probably meant nothing. The temporary response code to Vegeta’s number could have expired, for one. He’d only been able to message Vegeta at all since scouters allowed callback for a limited time even if a number was restricted. Or the scouter could be stashed in a drawer while Vegeta recuperated. No reason to assume the worst.

His beer was empty. Kakarot distractedly took the few steps to the fridge to replace it. He was being foolish, worrying so much about Vegeta. Seemed like it was getting harder and harder to shake his concerns lately, with so many shit-show missions. No wonder Arisad and Ulle had picked up on it yesterday, he was a mess. 

They’d had a point. He could ship out again at any time, and it’d be a hell of a lot easier to focus on whatever his next mission was if he’d seen with his own eyes that Vegeta was still breathing first. It’d be even better if he could actually stay with Vegeta, keep him company while he healed. Kakarot snorted. Yeah, Vegeta wouldn’t go for that. 

If Vegeta hadn’t been Prince, it would have been no problem for Kakarot to visit him. But then if he hadn’t been Prince he wouldn’t have been on the receiving end of Frieza’s tender mercies in the first place. At least his condition was being kept secret; Kakarot suspected Vegeta was the type where the insult would be even worse than the injury.

Cracking open the fresh beer, Kakarot gulped down a good third of the bottle. The sandstorm made his skin itch even though he wasn’t out in it. He pitied the poor sods who had guard patrols today, stuck out in that. There might even be extra with Vegeta’s injury.

But no, there probably weren’t - that’d raise questions, and the palace was keeping secrets. There could be a good use for this sandstorm after all.

* * *

Vegeta looked like hell. Rage tightened Kakarot’s throat and kept him conscious of every careful breath as he dropped lightly to the floor. He’d succeeded in sneaking in through the window, taking advantage of the sandstorm’s reduced visibility. Now that he was here, his chest hurt and his eyes stung with fury. 

Moving with light steps, Kakarot paced toward the bed. Bandages covered the visible side of Vegeta’s face, but Kakarot was certain it was him from the familiar scent and flame-shaped hair. Kakarot eased himself down onto the edge of the bed so that he wasn’t looming over Vegeta. The unbandaged right side of Vegeta’s face was heavily swollen, and his breathing wheezed slightly. Broken nose, broken ribs maybe. Kakarot clenched his eyes shut and took slow breaths in and out through his nose, trying to control his fury. 

When Kakarot opened his eyes again he saw Vegeta watching him, dark eye glinting slightly in the room’s dimmed lights. 

“You shouldn’t be here, Kakarot,” Vegeta’s voice was a labored rasp, and Kakarot forced back a wince - talking had to hurt. 

“I wanted to see you,” leaning slightly toward Vegeta, Kakarot kept his voice low. Vegeta watched him closely, lips slightly parted. 

“Regardless, Kakarot,” Vegeta sounded exhausted, “you shouldn’t be here.”

“No one saw me come in,” Kakarot murmured, “secret’s still safe.”

Vegeta laughed weakly, quickly winced and stopped. Definitely broken ribs. “Are you telling me that you snuck into my room like some kind of terrible ballad protagonist? And that you evaded the Royal Guard in doing so?”

“Yeah, you maybe wanna up your security a bit,” Kakarot smiled and slid closer to the head of the bed, careful not to jostle Vegeta, “but you know me, I don’t take treason seriously enough.”

“That’s going to get you in trouble one of these days, Kakarot,” but Vegeta was still smiling slightly, an unguarded expression. He must be too tired to pay attention to his face, or maybe he couldn’t even feel it with all the bruising. 

Vegeta was definitely still breathing, though. The knot in Kakarot’s stomach was finally ebbing, relief at seeing Vegeta momentarily swamping even his rage at Vegeta’s injuries. 

Moving carefully, Kakarot laid down on his side next to Vegeta, pressing them lightly together from shoulder to hip and dropping his left arm over Vegeta’s waist without allowing any weight to rest on him. 

“What the fuck, Kakarot.”

“If I’m hitting any injuries, then tell me and I’ll move. Otherwise, I’m staying put.” Kakarot shifted his face against the pillow to rest his forehead almost touching Vegeta’s bandaged face, breathing in Vegeta’s scent. The metallic tang of blood was heavy in the air, but there was no hint of infection. 

Silence weighed the room, though Kakarot could tell from Vegeta’s uneven breaths that he was still awake. 

“Why’d he do it?”

Vegeta let out a horrible wheeze of a laugh that turned into a sob. “Of course you would ask that. You really think I’ll just tell you?”

“You don’t have to.” That question had clearly been painful to Vegeta. He shifted next to Kakarot, then hissed in pain. Kakarot carefully splayed his hand over Vegeta’s hip, keeping the touch light in case of injuries. “But if you want to, I’ll listen.”

It seemed like Vegeta wasn’t going to answer the question. He remained silent for several beats, giving no indication he’d heard. 

“I refused an order,” Vegeta’s voice was wet, “I refused an order, and I told him to stop using us as cannon fodder.” He paused to draw in a shaking breath. “You can see how well that went.”

“Soli and Tor,” Kakarot breathed, needing to invoke both of the goddesses, “we really are lower than dirt to him.”

“Yes,” Vegeta’s right hand, apparently uninjured, reached to brush against Kakarot’s where it lay on Vegeta’s hip, “he thinks of us as garbage. It was in his every word, every action.”

Kakarot swallowed past the lump in his throat, shifted to interlace their fingers. “Thank you. For speaking up for us.”

Vegeta’s fingers convulsed around Kakarot’s. “Fat lot of good that did.” His voice was rough, shaking. “It’s as I’d feared. He places no value on Saiyan lives. Yet we dare not openly oppose him.” 

Gently squeezing Vegeta’s hand again, Kakarot disentangled his fingers to reach up and brush the moisture off Vegeta’s cheek, before rejoining their hands without comment. 

They lay in silence, Kakarot rubbing his thumb against the edge of Vegeta’s palm. It was true that they dared not oppose Frieza, but it looked like they dared not remain silent much longer either. Kakarot felt weighed down. He was tired of seeing people he cared for injured.

* * *

Turniz was curled protectively over his drink when Kakarot arrived at the Branch. Even with a batch of life or death battle behind him, he still tried to take up less space than he needed. 

“Hey, kid,” Kakarot dropped into the seat across from him, grinned. “Been waiting long?”

He probably had. Kakarot hadn’t slept much last night, trying to keep his rage in check so that he could be a soothing presence for Vegeta. It had seemed to help. Vegeta’s breathing was less tense when Kakarot finally slipped out at the sun started to clear the horizon, opting to leave without a word rather than disturb Vegeta’s sleep. But that lack of sleep had caught up to him, and Kakarot had let his 20 minute nap this afternoon turn into an hour. 

“Not long,” Turniz shrugged, “and - and thank you. You probably have better things to do than look after the rookie.”

“We were all rookies at some point, y’know,” Kakarot reached across the table to give Turniz a heavy shoulder clap. “What’s eating you this time?”

Turniz swallowed hard, stared into his drink. “You, um. You were on Rixshing,” he looked carefully at Kakarot through his bangs, “right?”

Rixshing. That fucking hellhole. They’d been a five person squad back then, before some Rixshingans barbecued Corrolit and Barkatz. Turniz had been the only replacement, bringing them to a cozy four-squad. Kakarot was glad Ulle and Arisad hadn’t been snuffed out in the battle too, but it’d been close. His tail still bristled thinking about it.

“Yeah, I was there,” Kakarot must have shown on his face how much he hated Rixshing, because Turniz was staring with wide and frightened eyes. Rolling his shoulders to loosen them, Kakarot gave Turniz a rueful grin. “Wasn’t exactly a nice place to be. Something you wanted to know about it, kiddo?”

“Well,” Turniz tightened his grip on his glass, curled over it again. “I’d been hearing rumors. That. Um. That we might… might go back.”

The room spun around Kakarot for a moment. He heard a crack and realized he’d gripped the table hard enough to break it. Turniz was watching him with his mouth hanging slightly open.

“Is - is it really that bad?” Turniz whispered. “You’re so unbelievably strong, for one of us I mean, but even you-“

Even Kakarot felt some fear at the thought of going back to Rixshing. Not so much for himself as for his squad, though he had no wish to bleed out on that fucking shitshow of a battleground. Maybe there was new intel. 

“Where’d you hear?” Kakarot must have missed some gossip, distracted as he was by news of Vegeta’s injury.

“Toma mentioned it.” Shit. Toma was on a squad with Kakarot’s father, and Toma was sharp. If he’d heard there’d be more squads sent to Rixshing, odds were good it’d happen.

Fucking Rixshing. What was Frieza thinking? They would be nothing but cannon fodder there, unless there was new intel or a better plan.

The sudden realization twisted Kakarot’s gut, jolted him. Rixshing was the order Vegeta had tried to refuse. It had to be. The timing was too coincidental. Kakarot swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat, the realization stinging. 

His scouter blipped with a new message. Turniz noticed it, breath hitching as he straightened slightly with nervous tension. “Is it a mission?”

Kakarot checked, found what he’d dreaded. “Yeah,” he smiled at Turniz to reassure him, felt it come out tense and crooked. “Looks like you heard right. Guess you’ll get to see Rixshing for yourself.”

His attempt at a lighthearted tone wasn’t fooling either of them. He reached over to grip Turniz’s shoulder, waited for the young warrior to look him in the eyes. “We’re gonna give em hell, kiddo.” Kakarot bared his teeth in a grin, “we’re Saiyan’s after all.”

Turniz nodded jerkily, “yes, Sir!”

Releasing Turniz to tap at his scouter, Kakarot message Arisad and Ulle to join them. “Now it’s time for our time honored tradition, getting the whole squad completely wasted once we get news for an especially rough mission.” He leaned back in his seat, grinned more easily now at Turniz, “you ready?”

Starting to look less terrified, Turniz nodded energetically. “That’s the spirit!” Kakarot slapped the table, “now let’s finish off this round before Ari and Ulle get here.”

* * *

It was a little harder to sneak into Vegeta’s room without the cover of a sandstorm, but Kakarot managed it. He knew the way now.

Vegeta was alert this time, pinning him with a stare. “You’re really getting into bad habits.”

Kakarot grinned widely, relief stretching his face. “Only for my favorite Prince.”

A laugh. “Was there another in the running?” 

Both of Vegeta’s eyes were visible this time, the bandaging on the left side of his face minimized since Kakarot’s last visit. His breathing sounded easier too. With the convenience of healing tanks, Kakarot had almost forgotten how fast a Saiyan could heal from near-mortal wounds on their own. And Vegeta was unusually tough even for a Saiyan.

“You’re looking better,” Kakarot dropped down onto the bed again, angled his body so he could meet Vegeta’s eyes. 

“Should I feel insulted for that comment on how I looked yesterday?” Vegeta narrowed his eyes carefully, still bruised. 

Laughing, Kakarot leaned down to kiss him. It didn’t stay light for long, Vegeta’s right hand rising to fist in Kakarot’s hair and drag him in. They drew apart for Vegeta to catch breath, still slowed by his healing nose. Kakarot bit gently at Vegeta’s lower lip, brought his hand up to brush his thumb along Vegeta’s right cheekbone. Vegeta’s tail worked free of the blankets to wrap around Kakarot’s thigh, and Kakarot slid his own tail against Vegeta’s in a caress that made Vegeta gasp against Kakarot’s mouth. 

Voices in the corridor forced Kakarot to dart out the window in fear of discovery. The conversation moved on, but it was a sharp reminder of how foolish this visit was. He shouldn’t prolong it. 

“Idiot,” Vegeta muttered softly to the room at large, “this is why your visits are utter stupidity.”

“Yeah,” Kakarot returned to his seat on the bed, “but I wanted to see you again.”

Vegeta’s eyes were dark. “Because I was such wonderful company yesterday.”

“Yeah, you were,” Kakarot held Vegeta’s gaze as Vegeta blinked in surprise. “It was Rixshing, wasn’t it?”

Sinking back slightly against his pillows, Vegeta let out a slow breath, “so the orders have been given.”

“Yeah.” The room’s space yawned in the silence. “I guess we’ll both be going back to that hellhole.”

“There’s no new intel,” Vegeta’s voice was blunt, “no new strategy.” 

“I figured,” Kakarot slipped his tail over Vegeta’s waist to curl around Vegeta’s good wrist. “If there’d been some kinda change, I figure you wouldn’t have fought it.”

“Mmm.” Vegeta shifted his arm in Kakarot’s grip, but didn’t try to remove the possessive tail. Kakarot twined his tail further up Vegeta’s arm, leaning in to bracket Vegeta’s head with his arms as he bent over Vegeta for another deep kiss. Vegeta returned it, sliding his tongue against Kakarot’s. This was starting to feel achingly familiar between them, and Kakarot wished he didn’t have to sneak back out the window.

But he’d risked too much time at the palace already. He’d go back to his place, and the next time he saw Vegeta would likely be the wastes of Rixshing.


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

 

 

The launch pad was chaotic when Vegeta arrived, technicians and crew scrambling in their preparation for the Rixshing campaign—but Vegeta could see that even amidst all the rush that he was being given a wide berth. He could see the furtive glances, and the way people were rushing to get out of his path as he approached—even more so than usual.

And he couldn’t blame them. It was his first public appearance since the incident on Frieza’s ship, and Vegeta knew what sort of rumors and hearsay had swirled in his absence. And now here he was, in the flesh, to confirm what everyone had been whispering about: he was _marked_. The still-healing bruises and scars that marred his skin were an unwelcome symbol of Frieza’s reach—a sobering reminder that even the Saiyan Prince would not go unpunished for his disobedience.

It wasn’t a message that Vegeta was keen to represent.

But he brushed off the stares and the palpable fear, and approached the bay where his pod was docked. He had only just keyed in the code to unseal its hatch when a sudden voice behind him drew his attention.

“Vegeta?”

A feminine voice, familiar—Vegeta turned, and lifted an eyebrow when he was greeted by the sight of the strange blue-haired technician. Her failure to address him by his royal title didn’t escape Vegeta’s notice—and if he were in a more heated mood, he would have chewed her out for it. But now, a day before he was to lead his men to the stars on a doomed mission, he found that he simply didn’t care.

If anything, it was just a relief to see a familiar face in a sea of people who were doing their best to avoid him.

“Bulma,” he said, mustering a smirk. “Just the technician I wanted to see—I should thank you for your work on the shieldbreaker.”

“You’re right you should,” she said, one hand resting on the hip of her coverall. “I heard the Rigellian mission went off without a hitch—all because of little old _me_.”

Vegeta’s smirk flattened to a glare. “No need to be so modest.”

“Wish I could help you out with this Rixshing business, but there’s only so much even a genius like myself can do on short notice,” Bulma went on. “Truthfully, I almost wish I could come along myself—I mean, a fortress planet orbiting a pulsar? How wild is that? I’d kill to have a look at the Rixshing planetary shield—from what I’ve read, it’s almost like a, what, sort of Dyson sphere? Who I wouldn’t kill to see the schematics on that—”

“I can assure you, you really want nothing to do with that entire fucking system,” Vegeta interrupted, rubbing at his temple—already he was beginning to regret this conversation.

“Well, fair enough, I guess,” Bulma said. “That said, I personally saw to it that all the hull-shielding on your fleet is up to code—you’re gonna need it in the radioactive soup around Rixshing’s sun.”

“Thanks,” Vegeta muttered. “I’ll be sure to put in a glowing review for your work when I make it onboard—I’m actually on my way to do some last minute inspections on my flagship.”

“Good,” Bulma smirked. “While you’re at it, you might as well give me a good performance review for the patch I wrote for your navigation software—I mean, it’s experimental, and I have no way to test it here, but it might make navigating easier when your radar and microwave relays are completely fucked by the pulsar’s EM field—I actually based it off my old Dragon Radar, so...”

Vegeta could feel the beginning of a headache already starting to take shape behind his eyes. He could barely parse a third of what this lunatic alien was saying, but the last bit in particular—

“... Dragon Radar?” he repeated

Bulma fell quiet, her jargon-laden spiel grinding to a sudden halt. Vegeta watched as she chewed on her thumbnail, as if grappling with a troublesome thought.

“Yeah,” she finally said, averting her eyes upward, avoiding Vegeta’s perplexed gaze. “It was something I made to track down Dragon Balls.”

Vegeta winced. This wasn’t getting any clearer.

“... Dragon Balls?”

Bulma pulled her hand away from her mouth, and looked toward Vegeta again.

“Remember that fairy tale I mentioned to you the last time we spoke?” she asked.

“Frankly, no.” Vegeta admitted bluntly. “I truly don’t know what the hell you’re on about half the time.”

But Bulma continued on like she hadn’t heard Vegeta at all. “My planet has an old story—a fairy tale—about seven artifacts that could summon a magic dragon to grant you a wish if you collected all seven. I never took the story very seriously—obviously it was some bizarre myth, right? At least I thought so until I actually found one of my own—and discovered how to track the rest down.” She crossed her arms, her features darkening bitterly. “Would’ve found them all, too, if Frieza’s goons hadn’t shown up and conquered my entire damn solar system.”

Vegeta attempted to parse the details of her story, but found he could do little more than blink. Genius or not, this woman was utterly and floridly insane.

“Woman,” he said, beginning to turn back toward his pod. “I don’t know what the hell kind of planet you come from—”

“I don’t have to tell you what kind of planet—I can show you,” Bulma said, and before Vegeta could even realize his guard was down, she reached out and plucked his scouter from his head. Vegeta snarled at her boldness, genuinely offended now, but Bulma seemed to ignore him—she was too busy tapping something into his scouter to pay him any notice.

“There,” she said before handing it back to him, and Vegeta was too shocked to do anything but hold the scouter limply in his hand. “Those are the coordinates to Earth—and the map to a place called Capsule Corp. I can’t help you out with Rixshing—but if you make it out alive, well... Maybe you can seek out your own reward.”

“...Right,” Vegeta muttered after a beat, and warily fixed his scouter back into place over his eye. Thinking that Bulma was finished, he finally faced his pod again, the hatch unsealing for him with a pneumatic hiss.

“Well, good luck on Rixshing, Vegeta,” he could hear her saying behind him. “And if you ever find yourself in Earth’s neighbourhood—you tell them Bulma Briefs sent you.”

Just before he climbed into his pod, Vegeta looked over his shoulder to answer her.

But Bulma had already turned away, and had melted back into the throng of technicians crowding the launchpad.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Vegeta’s cabin was easily the largest of the officer quarters on the ship, but it was still enough to leave him feeling caged and restless. It wasn’t just a matter of size—it was the way the recycled air tasted stale on his tongue, the harsh glow of the fluorescent lights, set even at their minimal brightness, and the constant, unrelenting drone of the ship’s engines.

Vegeta tried to distract himself, hunched over on his bunk as he scrolled through his tablet, obsessively reviewing every detail of the upcoming campaign. For a few brief moments, it gave him the comforting delusion of being in control—but all it took was a glance at the real-time feed of the ship’s trajectory, edging closer and closer to the Rixshing system with each moment, and suddenly he felt like he was spiralling again. He quickly tossed the tablet aside, and opted to pull on his armor instead—maybe a few final hours spent on the training deck would be a better use of his time until the fleet reached its intersection point.

But he’d barely cleared the narrow space from his bunk to the hatch when the light on his comm panel blinked on—someone was requesting entrance to his cabin.

“Who is it?” Vegeta barked, tapping open the vidfeed.

Kakarot’s grin greeted him from the other side.

“Hey, soldier,” he teased, leaning against the hatch with one arm. “Got any spare room in that bunk of yours?”

“Kakarot, you fucking idiot,” Vegeta hissed, unsealing his hatch so quickly he risked tearing it clean from the bulkhead. “What the hell do you think you’re doing on this deck?”

“Oh, don’t sweat it, Vegeta,” Kakarot’s said, still smirking, and he waved a hand dismissively as he swaggered into the cabin. “Most of the crew’s occupied with a party happening down on one of the lower decks—where I just snuck away from, actually. If you’re worried about anyone seeing me, I’ll just lie and say I was looking for my brother?”

Vegeta cursed under his breath as he sealed and relocked the hatch.

“You have to be more careful than this,” Vegeta spat, glaring as he turned to face Kakarot.

But Kakarot had already sat down on the edge of Vegeta’s bunk, and was kicking off his boots—settling in like he had just walked into his apartment on Planet Vegeta, and not the Prince’s personal quarters.

“Hey, I managed to sneak in and out of the Royal Palace without any problem,” Kakarot shrugged. “Besides—who cares what I’m doing on this deck? A better question would be how the hell did I end up on this _ship_ —a third class like me, on the Prince’s flagship, out of all the ships in the fleet?”

Vegeta rolled his eyes. He moved across the cabin to lean against the bulkhead, his back to Kakarot. He stared at the the cabin’s viewport, but saw nothing but opaque blackness—this close to the Rixshing system, every viewport was shuttered closed to shield against radiation. It wasn’t helping to ease Vegeta’s claustrophobia any.

“Perhaps your squad’s performance has earned you a promotion,” Vegeta said, shrugging as he crossed his arms. “Desperate times, Kakarot—anything is possible.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Kakarot conceded. “Or maybe—a certain Royal pain-in-the-ass pulled some strings to get me here and keep me close.”

Vegeta glanced over his shoulder to find Kakarot leaning back on the bunk, his grin wide and cocky.

“A compelling conspiracy theory,” Vegeta mused, but made no effort to confirm or deny it.

“Conspiracy or not, I thought I’d make the most of it,” Kakarot went on. “Unless you plan to sulk over in that corner for the rest of the evening.”

“Actually,” Vegeta said coldly, turning back to face the bunk. “I was about to head to the training deck.”

“C’mon, the training deck?” Kakarot said. “Soli, Vegeta, we’re hours out from Rixshing—can’t you relax, just for this moment?”

Vegeta winced. “Relax? You expect me to _relax_ right now?”

“Well, I can think of other things we can try,” Kakarot suggested, and by this point, Vegeta was imagining himself dragging Kakarot to the training deck with him—to wipe that insufferable grin off his face, if nothing else.

“Kakarot—” Vegeta started.

“C’mere, Vegeta,” Kakarot interrupted, and despite his irritation, Vegeta couldn’t find the energy to argue.

He couldn’t find the energy to do much except sit down on the edge of the bunk, sinking into the mattress next to Kakarot.

“How are you feeling?” Kakarot asked him, and leaned in closer until there was barely any space between them. Vegeta should have felt some measure of comfort from the gesture, from the way Kakarot’s body felt warm and solid next to his—but instead Vegeta sat coiled and tense, his hands clenching without any conscious effort. “You’re looking better, at least,” Kakarot continued. “Since the last time I saw you, I mean.”

Vegeta uttered a noise that fell somewhere between a bitter laugh and a scoff. He had to wonder what exactly what Kakarot’s definition was of ‘looking better’—even though his face no longer hurt to touch, Vegeta’s skin was still a mottled spectrum of yellow and purple where his nose had been shattered, and even though he had regained his vision, he could still trace the ugly scar across his eyelid where his scouter had been smashed in.

“I’ve felt worse,” he said, truthfully.

“I can make you feel better,” Kakarot said, in a low purr close to Vegeta’s ear. “If you’ll let me.”

Vegeta didn’t miss the way Kakarot’s tail brushed against his own, but the touch had the opposite of Kakarot’s intended effect—it felt suddenly like something had ripped open a weak spot in Vegeta’s armor, and suddenly Vegeta felt breathless, like his chest was collapsing inward.

“We’re not going to make it out of this alive,” he said abruptly, stunning even himself as the words escaped him.

“Well, that’s reassuring to hear,” Kakarot said. “Real morale-booster.”

Kakarot offered Vegeta a rueful grin, but Vegeta wasn’t looking at him. He was staring directly ahead, to the space in front of him—or maybe at nothing at all.

“We have far bigger things to worry about right now than fucking morale,” he finally managed to say.

“Morale’s about all we got left, Vegeta.” Kakarot’s hand found Vegeta’s, his fingers sliding against skin that went for once ungloved. Vegeta looked down at Kakarot’s hand clasping his own, but made no move to pull away.

“You should be with your squad tonight,” Vegeta muttered. “I’m sure they could make better use of your optimism.”

Kakarot’s other hand caught Vegeta’s chin, and tugged Vegeta’s face toward his own.

“Maybe,” Kakarot said. “But I’d rather be with you.”

Vegeta tried to tug his face away, but Kakarot held steady. “Really—you’d be happier revelling in the lower decks with your squadmates,” Vegeta said, voice dipping to a low murmur. “You should leave.”

Kakarot leaned in, and licked his lips. “Is that an order?”

“Oh, fuck you, Kakarot.”

But Vegeta’s curse was little more than a soft whisper, utterly heatless, and he found himself sinking helplessly against Kakarot’s body, his lips parting hungrily to accept Kakarot’s kiss. Kakarot’s tail wrapped possessively around Vegeta’s waist, pulling him in closer, and Vegeta felt suddenly, unbearably hot in the warmth of the cabin, pressed so close to Kakarot. His hands fumbled for Kakarot’s armor, aiming to strip it off before tearing off his own—

But then the entire cabin was rocked with a blast that suddenly tore them apart.

Time seemed to stutter and stop, and it was several agonizing moments before Vegeta could piece together the situation. The cabin spun in a dim blur around him—the lights had gone out with the blast—and Vegeta braced himself for a hard collision with the deck that never came. The artificial gravity had been knocked out, and he was spinning, arms scrabbling for any surface, his bunk, the bulkhead, anything, to bring him to a stop—

Emergency lights flickered on, harsh red in the inky blackness, and Vegeta could see Kakarot reaching out for him—from beneath him?—it was impossible to tell with the sudden loss of gravity, and Vegeta’s ears rang with a high, piercing note that somehow sang above the harsh ship klaxons that blared from the corridor outside. That was a good sign, at least—the noise meant air, and air meant that the hull of this ship sector hadn’t been breached. Not yet.

But despite the painful hum in his ears, Vegeta listened closer—he began piecing together a few snatched words of the shipboard security warnings that blared between the wail of alarms—

_Defense systems disabled—_

The sirens continued to climb in pitch—

_—evacuation protocol for all personnel—_

The ringing in Vegeta’s ears climbed so high and sharp, he felt like his skull might split open—

_Proceed to nearest—_

“We’ve been hit,” Kakarot was suddenly shouting above the din, and his hand finally grabbed Vegeta’s, bringing him to a stop.

With his free arm, Vegeta grabbed his scouter, which was spinning past him in the microgravity.

“We have to—we have to get out of here—” Kakarot pleaded, and Vegeta had only just managed to fix his scouter on before another blast rocked the ship again.

But this time, Vegeta and Kakarot didn’t separate—they clutched each other hard as the cabin threatened to shake apart around them. Vegeta only pulled away to tap at his scouter, but couldn’t hail anyone—Raditz and Nappa weren’t responding, and the ship’s main comm channels were down.

“Shit,” Vegeta hissed. “I can’t get anyone—I can’t reach the bridge, or—”

“I have to get the launch bay,” Kakarot said, looking toward the cabin hatch, as if expecting it to be blasted down at any second. “I have to find my squad, and get out of here—”

“You’ll be dead before you ever make it there,” Vegeta barked, pulling Kakarot by the upper arm. “Get in my escape pod with me.”

But Kakarot was trying to pull away. “Vegeta, I’m their squad leader—I can’t just abandon them—”

“You’ll be no good to them dead, Kakarot!” Vegeta snarled, and he began pulling himself in the direction of the the escape pod hatch, yanking Kakarot in tow. Vegeta quickly tapped a code into a panel on the bulkhead, and a small hatch irised open, revealing the opening to his personal attack pod.

“You expect us to both escape in that?” Kakarot said, just before another concussive blast hit the ship, and the ship’s alarm system reached a howling pitch.

“Would you rather take your chances in the vacuum?” Vegeta shouted, but didn’t give Kakarot a chance to reply. “Just fucking get in already—and that _is_ an order!”

Vegeta watched Kakarot deliberate for a moment before finally crawling inside—even a hard-headed squad leader like Kakarot could see that the ship wasn’t going to last long enough for him to make it from the officer quarters all the way to the launch bay, not under this kind of bombardment.

Vegeta rushed in after him, struggling to make room for himself in the confined space. Their bodies quickly formed an awkward tangle of legs and arms as Vegeta settled uncomfortably in Kakarot’s lap, and he somehow elbowed Kakarot in the face as he scrambled at the pod’s controls.

Vegeta heard a muffled noise of pain in his ear as the hatch sealed shut, and disengaged.

“Vegeta, this is fucking crazy—”

But Kakarot’s words were cut short when the force of the pod’s acceleration slammed into them, knocking the air from their lungs. Vegeta winced, feeling like the weight of an Oozaru was bearing down on his chest, and tried to ignore the nausea that bubbled up from the pit of his stomach as their pod rocketed at full speed away from the besieged flagship.

 _Better crazy than fucking dead_ , Vegeta thought as he lifted his hand to his scouter. He tried frantically to lock in to the pod’s navigation and comm channels, searching desperately for the rest of the fleet—he caught the signatures of a few escaped pods, but the signals were weak, lost in the noise of the star system’s background radiation. Vegeta’s jaw clenched, his hand shaking against his scouter.

The attack was only the start of their problems—they were flying blind out here.

And worse—they were utterly alone.


	9. Chapter 9

Kakarot couldn’t see a fucking thing. Vegeta’s hair prickled Kakarot’s nose, which still ached from the elbow Vegeta had smashed into it moments before. Static hissed through the pod’s comm system, coupled with a high pitched beeping that sounded like bad news. The red tinted light spilling into the pod dimmed and then flashed intermittently. Explosions?

“Vegeta, what’s going on out there?” Kakarot had left his squad on that damned flagship, he needed to know what was happening.

“You think I can fucking see anything, Kakarot?” Vegeta was snarling. “We’re flying away from the damned mess, not toward it.”

“Do we have anything? Any systems working?” Kakarot tried to shift so that Vegeta’s weight didn’t push against him so uncomfortably - Vegeta wasn’t exactly squishy - but he must have jostled Vegeta’s ribs too much because Vegeta hissed and smacked his elbow haphazardly into Kakarot a few times. Kakarot grunted at the impact to his ribs and upper arm.

“Hold _still_ , Kakarot!” 

“It was your bright idea to squash two people into one escape pod, _your exalted highness_ , now tell me if we have any systems!”

“We’re in the fucking Rixshing system, Kakarot, of course we don’t have any systems!” Vegeta’s breath sounded labored. Being squished in this pod probably wasn’t helping his still healing ribs. Yelling at Kakarot probably wasn’t either.

Kakarot exhaled deeply and tipped his forehead against Vegeta’s hair, willing himself calm. He closed his eyes, shutting out most of the dim flashes. They’d have to hope that their systems came back online once they cleared the radiation clouds of the Rixshing system. It was impossible to make any repairs or adjustments to the pod inflight, and they didn’t have spacesuits. They needed to get somewhere with atmosphere. And food, at some point. Though being able to fucking steer would help with that, and steering needed the navigation systems to come back online first.

“I guess we’ve got some time to kill, Vegeta,” Kakarot slid an arm around Vegeta’s abdomen, tone flirtatious.

“Splendid idea, Kakarot, except for one minor detail,” Vegeta squirmed on Kakarot’s lap, grinding into Kakarot’s groin and drawing an involuntary gasp from Kakarot, “you seriously think we have enough space for that?!”

Probably not, and Kakarot’s original plan had been to lighten the mood rather than actually try to fuck his prince in a spacepod. “Well stop grinding your ass against my dick, then!”

Vegeta being Vegeta, he took that as an invitation to twist himself against Kakarot’s crotch again, and fuck if Kakarot wasn’t hardening. With so little room in the pod, Kakarot’s nose was pressed to Vegeta’s head or neck regardless of what position he took, and Vegeta’s scent filling his nose was quickly becoming maddening. Kakarot shifted the arm he’d wrapped around Vegeta’s waist, sliding his hand up to splay across Vegeta’s chest and hold him still. Vegeta inhaled sharply and lashed his tail, hitting Kakarot’s sensitive groin again, and Kakarot hissed and caught Vegeta’s neck with his teeth in a hard nip. 

“For fuck’s sake, Kakarot,” Vegeta was out of breath, “how is this the time?”

“It isn’t,” Kakarot snapped, adding his second arm to the first around Vegeta’s waist. More elbow room that way. “Now hold still and quit with the grinding.”

Vegeta growled. “Don’t flatter yourself, Kakarot, it was merely the lack of space-“

He was forced to stop as Kakarot thunked his head back against the seat rest and roared with laughter. “You’re still being coy? How many times have fucked now, Vegeta?”

“Are you implying that it was that forgettable, Kakarot-“ Kakarot was lucky that the navigation system bleeped back online at that point. Not his best choice of words.

* * *

Vegeta’s back was warm against Kakarot’s chest, and his heart beat steadily under Kakarot’s hand. Wrapping his arms around Vegeta had increased Kakarot’s elbow room significantly, and it was a helluva lot more comfortable than the awkward tangle of limbs they’ve first tumbled into the pod with. Which was a damn good finding, because they were stuck there for at least the next three days without stasis. Couldn’t be used with two lifesigns in a pod meant for one.

The pod was limping toward Frieza system 43, a conquered cluster of planets orbiting a twin star system that probably started off with a more interesting name than Frieza Sol 43. Imagination wasn’t the strong suit of the PTO. Kakarot couldn’t remember what was on any of the planets, and the pod systems weren’t functional enough to learn. Not that it mattered. They’d get there, get into separate ships, then probably ship straight back to the Rixshing debacle. Kakarot ignored the ice trying to form in his stomach at the idea Frieza might somehow blame Vegeta for the attack.

At least Kakarot could find out what happened to his squad mates. Jumping ship without them had left a sour taste in his mouth, and the back of his throat stung whenever he thought of them - Ulle, Arisad, and Turniz - still trapped on the flagship when it inevitably exploded in the vacuum. He wouldn’t breathe easy again until he knew his squad was safe, not truly. Poor Turniz had been right to fear the Rixshing system, but Kakarot hadn’t been able to do a damned thing to spare the kid from it.

Vegeta’s hand brushed Kakarot’s lips as Vegeta rubbed at the back of his own neck. “You’re breathing too much, Kakarot.” 

“Can’t really help that, Vegeta,” Kakarot tightened his arms around Vegeta and pressed his nose directly into Vegeta’s neck instead as soon as the hand withdrew. He must have been tickling Vegeta. The one good thing about the current mess was that he knew for sure Vegeta was safe - Vegeta was right here with Kakarot wrapped around him. Vegeta sighed suddenly and Kakarot felt a hand brush his tail, which he’d coiled around Vegeta’s ankle unconsciously.

“I really will not be going anywhere, Kakarot,” Vegeta’s tone was dry.

“Good,” Kakarot bit back, suddenly mad, “because you keep coming back all beat up whenever you do go anywhere.”

Vegeta growled and deliberately pinched Kakarot’s tail, and Kakarot hissed in pain and pulled back. 

The silence inside the pod was dark this time, but Kakarot didn’t want to be the one to break it. He tried to shift his head slightly to the side, hoping to catch a glimpse of star light out the viewpoint if he could clear Vegeta’s hair. Vegeta slapped him on the cheek to move him back into place.

“I just don’t like seeing you hurt,” Kakarot broke the silence after all.

“I haven’t been seeking it out,” Vegeta snapped. 

“I know.” Kakarot pressed his lips against the back of Vegeta’s neck where he’d tickled before. “Truce?”

Close as they were, Kakarot could feel the shift in muscles as Vegeta sighed heavily. “Fine.”

This was going to be a damned long three days without food or water. All to get back to being Frieza’s good little pawns.

“Can we go somewhere else, Vegeta?”

“What?”

“Somewhere other than the 43 system,” Kakarot knew as he said it that it was impossible. Where would they go? Even if they took the pod off course, it would report the deviation to central command. They’d be pursued as deserters and killed even more surely than if they went back to the Rixshing system.

* * *

They were going to have to fuck in the pod. For their sanity. It hadn’t even been a day yet, and Kakarot was already going mad at being pressed against Vegeta, surrounded by his scent, yet doing nothing. Maybe the logistical challenge would add some spice.

The navigation system blipped before Kakarot could share this conclusion with Vegeta. 

“Anything interesting on there, captain?”

“Capt-?” Vegeta aborted the question partway. “No, nothing interesting. Space trash.”

“Space trash could be interesting,” Kakarot reflected that Saiyans really were not designed for long periods of quiet sitting, “what kind of space trash? Tell me all about it?’

“What kind of fucking pointless,” Vegeta sighed. “Fine. Not as if we’re using our time for anything more important here. It’s a class C-516 freighter, floating dead. Cargo doors ripped open. Probably robbed and the crew slaughtered when this system was purged, that model hasn’t been in service for decades.”

“A _ship?_ ” Kakarot’s voice rose, breath catching, “Vegeta, a ship is the opposite of boring! We need to check it out!”

“Splendid idea, Kakarot, I’ll just park the space pod in the landing bay, behind the doors that won’t open from the outside, and we’ll stretch our legs in the defunct freighter _entirely lacking breathable atmosphere _-“__

“What if we could get it working?” Kakarot cut him off. “Vegeta, that ship won’t be tagged with a tracker. If we get it working, we could go anywhere.”

“We are not engineers, Kakarot, and where could we go that would-“ Vegeta cut himself off this time. Kakarot nudged him in the arm after he’d been silent for too long, and was swatted for his troubles. 

“Did you think of something or not, Vegeta?” Kakarot caught Vegeta’s hand, trying to head off any further swatting and taking a moment to enjoy the feeling of warm skin directly against his own. No time for gloves during evacuation.

“It’s probably a fool’s errand,” Kakarot could feel the tension in Vegeta’s muscles, “but if it’s not, we may be able to gain an advantage against Frieza.”

Kakarot sucked in his breath sharply, then held it for a moment as he tried to wrap his head around that. “If there’s a chance, Vegeta, then we have to take it. We have to.”

* * *

Pods weren’t intended to be piloted with manual controls. Kakarot kept his chin hooked over Vegeta’s shoulder and tried not to breathe too loudly in case he broke Vegeta’s concentration. Vegeta was manipulating the pod into the wrecked cargo bay with surprising expertise, but it was a tight fit.

“You realize,” Vegeta paused as he nudged the pod past a particularly twisted piece of ship hull, “that there is not going to be air in this wreck of a cargo bay.”

“Then we’ll hold our breath til we get into the main ship,” Kakarot tamped down a shrug just in time. If they bumped the wreck out here with no gravity or atmosphere, they’d start it slowly spinning away from them and it’d be even harder to board. “We’re tough enough to last in the vacuum with ki shields for a couple minutes, and we can hold our breath just as long. We only need to get the doors open.” And hope like hell that the main ship had a functional atmospheric system set to be breathable for Saiyans. No way to tell for sure from out here.

Vegeta sighed and didn’t answer. Seconds later, the pod clanked loudly against the bay floor as Vegeta engaged the magnetic coupler. 

Even through ki shielding, the freezing air of the vacuum felt like knives against Kakarot’s skin. He grasped Vegeta’s hand as they carefully steered to the bay door with targeted ki bursts. Vegeta’s skin felt cold now, and Kakarot wished he’d brought his gloves after all. Behind them, space stretched endless past the twisted opening in the bay, an unfeeling blanket of stars.

The bay door had no lock, and opened easily at Vegeta’s touch. A blast of atmosphere knocked them spinning, and Kakarot only now realized that the bay’s airlock doors had been jammed open by a twisted section of hull. He felt Vegeta’s grip on his hand tighten. 

They bumped soundlessly into the bay’s hull just to the side of the jagged opening. A few handspans more and they would have been in open space with no tether or suits. Tugging on Vegeta’s hand, Kakarot pushed ki into flight. Vegeta must have done the same, and they moved slowly back to the ship door, gliding through this time into the ship’s interior. Vegeta slammed a fist against the door panel, closing the cargo bay out.

* * *

The hot water pounding Kakarot’s back felt like both a luxury and a necessity. Apart from the broken airlock, the cargo ship was in stunningly good condition. The atmosphere cycled, the control panels lit up, and they were able to parse enough of the Xlasonian to see that they had atmosphere and water recirc functioning, and fuel enough to get wherever they wanted. Could do with less white, though. The interior of the ship was nearly blinding, and oddly clinical for a cargo freighter. Lighting bounced off the white walls, glass sides, and white shelving in the shower to the point that it hurt Kakarot’s eyes after the dark of the pod for so long.

What they didn’t have was food, since Xlasonians ate minerals utterly useless to Saiyans, but that was a problem for later. Right now, Kakarot just wanted to warm up and stop shivering after the near miss with the vacuum earlier. And ideally Vegeta would make good on his promise to join in. 

The hand on his tail made Kakarot jump and snarl, spinning into a fighting pose and smacking his head on the shower shelves before realizing it was only Vegeta.

“Not the welcome I was expecting,” Vegeta smirked. “A little jumpy, are we?”

Vegeta looked like hell. Kakarot hadn’t actually been able to see him while they’d been in the pod, so he’d managed to forget about Vegeta’s injuries for a while. No chance of that now. With his battlesuit stripped off, the extent of Vegeta’s injuries at Frieza’s hands was fully visible. Broken ribs, broken nose, bruising down his entire torso and hell, what had happened to his back? Kakarot gripped Vegeta’s shoulder to rotate him, ignoring Vegeta’s growled protest. The darkest bruise at the base of Vegeta’s spine looked suspiciously foot shaped. He was lucky no vertebrae had cracked.

“Are you done?” Vegeta hissed. His muscles were tense under Kakarot’s hand. 

“Hey,” Kakarot gentled his voice, stepped closer to Vegeta and turned the grip on his shoulder into a caress slipping down Vegeta’s arm. “I need to know where not to put pressure, don’t I?”

Vegeta turned to face Kakarot, closing the distance to bring their chests flush together. It had the side effect of hiding Vegeta’s face from Kakarot, though Kakarot could feel Vegeta’s breath on his collarbone. Kakarot’s tail wrapped protectively around Vegeta’s waist, but he drew it back after Vegeta growled at the implication.

Protection wasn’t what Vegeta wanted. Kakarot released his grip on Vegeta’s arm and dropped to his knees before Vegeta. Vegeta curled his tail around Kakarot’s neck, twisted a fist into Kakarot’s hair. 

“Distract me, Kakarot,” Kakarot managed to tip his head up slightly, looking up the length of Vegeta’s body trying to see his face. Vegeta loosened his grip enough that Kakarot could meet his gaze. “Distract me, Kakarot. Wasn’t that your original offer?”

“Yeah,” Kakarot smiled sloppily, “I guess you were listening.” 

Vegeta hummed in agreement, and Kakarot lowered his head to Vegeta’s cock. Time to deliver on that distraction. Soli knew they both needed one right now.

* * *

Kakarot could only tell what about half the displays on the bridge were showing. There was no reason to train foot soldiers to read navigational charts, and even though the blinking purple indicator likely showed their current position, he couldn’t recognize anything around it. Hopefully Vegeta, trained for command, would be able to make sense of it.

The circular port to the bridge slid open, the indicator light flashing to purple then back to blue after the doors closed behind Vegeta. Kakarot nodded in acknowledgment, and remained silent as Vegeta threaded past the scooped officer chairs fixed to the bridge’s deck. It occurred to Kakarot that he didn’t even know if it was possible to fly this thing with only two people.

Vegeta was tapping at his scouter now, pulling up something. Kakarot watched him frown, repeat his tapping, frown more deeply. Cursing softly, Vegeta moved to the console and input coordinates to Soli knew where, then stood back and swore in earnest.

“You really do have a filthy mouth for a prince, Vegeta.”

“It’s going to take fucking months to get to that backwater in this pile of trash!” Vegeta kicked at the base of the console. 

“Take longer if you break it.”

“Fuck you, Kakarot.”

“Again already?” Kakarot grinned as Vegeta whirled to snarl at him, “hey, you were the one who asked.”

“How the hell are you so cheerful when you don’t even know where we’re going?” Vegeta’s tail lashed, “or perhaps it’s because you don’t know where we’re going. You have no idea just how long a shot this is.”

“So tell me,” Kakarot frowned. “You said something about a technician and a legend. Something about wishes.”

Vegeta frowned. “That’s almost all the detail I have. The planet is called Earth, and that garish technician said there was something there that could be collected then used to wish for whatever one desired. Unlikely.”

The vista outside the curved viewport was dark as it slid past, stars too small to register. Kakarot watched the empty scene for a moment while he weighed his response.

“Kakarot.”

Too long a pause, apparently. “Even if it’s unlikely that we’ll succeed, Vegeta,” Kakarot turned to meet Vegeta’s eyes, “if we don’t try something, it’s certain that Frieza will continue to use up the Saiyan race until the last of us lies dead in the dirt. We have to get to Earth.”


	10. Chapter 10

It didn’t take long for Vegeta and Kakarot to do a complete inventory on the Xlasonian ship. The bridge was fully functional, navigation and communication systems were in working order, even if the software was out of date, and the life support systems were running remarkably smooth for a ship that had clearly been out of commission for years. Aside from the damaged cargo hold, nothing seemed particularly amiss.

Except, perhaps, the sleeping quarters.

As far as Vegeta and Kakarot could tell, there was no proper berth anywhere on the ship. The closest they had found were racks of some kind of biomechanic pods, halfway between a med-tank and some kind of gelatinous membrane. Neither Saiyan was particularly well-versed in Xlasonian biology to hazard a guess as to what purpose the pods served, but they sure as hell weren’t going to sleep in them.

That left with them with the ship’s brig.

The brig was in the belly of the ship, and was easily the most cramped cabin they had found, which was an accomplishment on a compact cargo freighter. There were no viewports, no decor, and the walls were the same, sterile white as the rest of ship, though it tended more towards grey in the dim lighting. The cabin had no hatch—only a wide, open archway where an energy-shield likely would have been in place to cage prisoners, were it still functional.

And built into the bulkhead was a single, narrow bunk—hardly enough to accomodate two Saiyans.

It hadn’t stopped them from trying.

It was only a matter of hours before Vegeta bristled awake from his shallow, fitful sleep, thoroughly annoyed to find Kakarot’s arm wrapped around his waist, and Kakarot’s tail coiled similarly around his thigh. Worse was the feeling of Kakarot’s breath, warm on the back of his neck as he snored gently against Vegeta’s skin.

“Kakarot,” Vegeta hissed.

But Vegeta’s protest only earned him a muffled noise from Kakarot, and Vegeta felt Kakarot’s nose nuzzling against his hair as he pulled in closer.

“Kakarot!” Vegeta said again, louder this time—and punctuated with a sharp elbow into Kakarot’s ribs.

“Wh—wha?” Kakarot grumbled behind him, voice thick the dregs of sleep. “What’s the matter?”

“You’re fucking suffocating me,” Vegeta snapped. “Get off of me.”  
“Mmm,” Kakarot hummed against his neck. “ ‘s cold though.”

“I don’t care,” Vegeta growled, even if Kakarot was right—the brig’s climate control was dismal, and the threadbare sheet shared between them was less than helpful.

“It’s never bothered you before,” Kakarot breathed into his ear, his hand sliding up the length of Vegeta’s stomach.

Vegeta shivered, and thought back immediately to sleeping at Kakarot’s apartment, or how it had felt to have Kakarot lie with him back in Vegeta’s personal quarters in the Palace. The feeling of Kakarot’s hands, warm like they were now, soothing bruised skin and aching bones. The false sense of security that Vegeta had been too eager to sink into, one too many times now.

Of course it bothered him.

“Kakarot—” Vegeta started, but the word was brittle, cracking in Vegeta’s throat as he felt Kakarot’s hips grind against him from behind. Kakarot’s mouth was hot as he kissed the back of Vegeta’s neck, and Vegeta could feel that Kakarot was already half-hard as he rutted against him. Vegeta could already feel himself responding in kind, the mounting pressure in his groin almost immediate.

“That’s enough,” Vegeta said, teeth gritted as he pulled Kakarot’s arm off him and threw off the sheet that covered them. “We don’t have time for this!”

“C’mon, Vegeta—”

“We have to fix the cargo bay,” Vegeta spat as he pulled on his battlesuit. “If you could stop thinking with your dick for five minutes, you’d remember that. Now get out bed.”

But Kakarot was already sinking back into the bunk, groaning as he covered his eyes with his arm.

“Would it kill us to catch a few more minutes of sleep?”

Vegeta responded by slamming a button in the outer corridor that turned the brig’s lights to their maximum brightness. Kakarot let out a harsher groan of pain.

“Quit whining,” Vegeta said. “Out of bed. _Now_. That’s an order.”

Kakarot grumbled as he pulled himself to the edge of the bunk, wincing as he felt around the floor for his clothes and boots.

“Really, Vegeta?” he said as he shrugged on his armor. “You’re really pulling rank right now?”

“Last I checked, I’m still the fucking Saiyan Prince, Kakarot.”

“Last I checked, everyone back home probably assumes we’re both dead,” Kakarot said bitterly. “I’m no expert on royal succession or whatever—but do you still keep your title if you die?”

If Kakarot was baiting him for a fight, Vegeta wasn’t going to sink to it.

“I’ll meet you on the bridge, Kakarot,” Vegeta said, and stormed off down the corridor.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“There has to be a better way.”

“I dunno, Vegeta. I don’t think we have any other options.”

The Xlasonian spacesuit was ill-fitting—far too tight in the joints, and the awkward, three-fingered gloves made Vegeta’s hands feel like claws—but Kakarot was easily a head too tall to even consider fitting into it.

That left Vegeta with the responsibility of doing the ship repairs.

“You ever done any ki-welding before?” Kakarot asked as he watched Vegeta fix his scouter into place over his eye.

“Yes, a bit,” Vegeta muttered as Kakarot helped him recheck the seals of his suit. “I’ve done minor repairs on my own pod more than once—but I’ve never done anything in hard vacuum.”

And Vegeta wasn’t particularly excited to start now—but if they didn’t get the shattered cargo hold fixed, any attempt to make planetfall would leave the ship breaking up on re-entry. And they were only a day out, maybe two, from entering the Aymovich system, which according to their navigational scans was home to Frieza Planet 593—a small, largely uncharted planet that seemed to harbor biological life.

Which meant food. Which meant the sooner they could put their steadily mounting Saiyan appetites to rest.

“Trust me, it’s a piece of cake,” Kakarot assured him, passing Vegeta his space helmet. Vegeta carefully slid it over his head, and snapped it into place, thankful that the Xlasonians at least seemed to have a similar a head-shape as Saiyans.

“If you run into trouble, you know where to call me,” Kakarot said, flashing a grin as he tapped his scouter.

“Right,” Vegeta muttered, and turned away to face the outer airlock door.

In the muffled space of his helmet, Vegeta didn’t hear Kakarot leave, but he felt the dull vibration of the inner airlock hatch sealing shut, and felt the subtle shift in his suit pressure as the cabin started to depressurize.

“Everything’s looking good from my end,” Kakarot’s voice crackled across his scouter. “Enjoy the starshine, Vegeta.”

And with that the outer door unsealed, and Vegeta was greeted by an infinite gulf of blackness and stars. He suddenly felt vulnerable, hating the feeling of having nothing but a few inches of material separating him from the abyss crushing down on all sides of him. The dizziness was immediate, and he tried to shake it off before he moved to step outside, dragging a hovercart loaded with spare sheets of hull shielding behind him.

Vegeta moved across the hull of the ship, the magnetic soles of his boots keeping him connected to the surface, and he tried to keep his breath steady as his head spun. He was half-tempted to speak into his scouter, to get Kakarot to talk to him as distraction from the nausea already churning in his stomach, but Vegeta thought better of it. He needed to focus. The sooner he got this done, the sooner he could get back in the ship, and maybe into a warm shower. Maybe Kakarot would join him again.

Vegeta shook his head. _Focus, damn it._

He was relieved when he finally came upon the damaged cargo bay, the breached hull like a massive, twisted wound before him. Vegeta reached for the tool belt strapped to his waist, and unspooled a few short lengths of cable to attach himself and the cart to the ship. Tethered to the ship, with the stars at his back, he found it easier to drown out the crushing vastness of his surroundings.

He took a deep breath, grabbed the first sheet of hull plating from the pile, and went to work.

His welding rod felt strange at first in his awkwardly gloved hand. His ki thrummed down the length of it just as it should, glowing where it touched and fused metal, but the vacuum of space silenced the usual sound of sparking energy, of metal grinding against metal. He had nothing to rely on but the feeling of the vibration through his gloves, the sensation of ki flowing through his fingertips, and the sound of his own, steady breaths.

Before long he fell into an easy rhythm, and nearly found himself laughing at the absurdity of it. He couldn’t trace the full of thread of events that had led him to this moment even if he tried—but here he was, reduced to the work of a lowly ship tech, clinging like an insect to the belly of a derelict, forgotten cargo freighter, feeling less like a warrior prince and more like a rounding error in an in utterly indifferent universe.

But then again—he had been feeling less and less like the Prince of All Saiyans for much longer than the time it took to complete a single, lonely spacewalk.

Out here, alone in the vacuum with nothing but the sound of his own breathing to distract him, Vegeta could feel the full weight of all his failures suddenly bearing down on him. He had failed to satisfy so many of the expectations placed upon him, so many of his royal duties —too many to count, at this point. His father had made that clear to him back on Planet Vegeta.

Vegeta felt his stomach knot angrily as he thought back to his last conversation with the King—he didn’t want to think about it, not now, and his hands shook as he tried to work—but out in the void, alone in the darkness, the memory rose up unbidden before he could stop it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

_Vegeta had been summoned by the King the night before he shipped out for Rixshing. To his personal study, no less—with no audience, no other members of the Royal Court—just Prince and King, face to face. With Vegeta constantly between training and missions, he couldn’t remember the last time such a conversation had taken place._

_Vegeta had every reason to be apprehensive about it._

_The King was seated when Vegeta entered the chamber, and despite the dim lighting cast by Planet Vegeta’s setting suns, Vegeta thought the shadows beneath his father’s eyes looked slightly darker than usual, the lines in his face a little deeper. For a long moment, Vegeta felt his father’s narrowed gaze take in the sight of him—his eyes settling on every visible bruise and laceration, his lip beginning to curl in something like disgust._

_Vegeta watched as his father picked up a decanter from his desk and filled a goblet with wine. He didn’t offer Vegeta any._

_“Is there a reason in particular you’ve summoned me?” Vegeta asked flatly, resisting the impulse to rest his hand impatiently on on his hip. “My deployment is in a matter of hours now, I don’t have time—”_

_“Does it not occur to you,” the King growled around the lip of his cup, “that I might simply want to say goodbye to my son before he’s sent off to one of the bloodiest theatres of war in the galaxy?”_

_Vegeta’s tail bristled around his waist and his lips pulled back into a sneer, unable to hide the sudden burst of anger that flared within him._

_“Oh, of course,” Vegeta hissed, and spite bubbled out of him before he could tamp it down. “ **Now** you care. I don’t seem to remember you offering the same concern when I was recovering from Frieza’s assault—you couldn’t be bothered to check in on me once, if I recall correctly.”_

_“Where did I go wrong, with you, Vegeta?” the King said bluntly as he slammed his goblet down on the table._

_Vegeta shrugged, grimacing. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”_

_“Did you think I wanted this?” King Vegeta spat, shaking his head before he took another drink of his wine. But he didn’t seem to savor it—instead he winced, as if he were drinking down a particularly vile tincture. “Do you think I **planned** to send my heir apparent to death?”_

_Vegeta stared at his father’s cup, half-wishing the wine were poisoned. “Thank you for the glowing vote of confidence, father. Truly.”_

_“Vegeta.” The King’s voice darkened. “Soli knows I’ve tried to teach you some… some measure of self-control. Of perspective. But in all these years, I don’t think I’ve managed to get a single lesson through that hot-headed skull of yours.”_

_Vegeta watched as the King stood up from his desk, refilling his goblet before he strode to the study’s window._

_“I can forgive a lot, Vegeta,” the King muttered, shaking his head again as he took another drink. “Your shirking of royal duties that you seem to think are beneath you—your constant, unexplained absences from the Palace—” King Vegeta rubbed at his brow, and in the dim, red light spilling through the window, he looked wearier than ever. “But your—your **attitude**. Look where it’s gotten you—look where it’s gotten us **all**. Countless soldiers, sent again to die at Rixshing—all because you couldn’t hold your tongue for five minutes in Frieza’s presence.”_

_“I see,” Vegeta said through gritted teeth, his words suddenly steeped in venom. “You would have me lick Frieza’s boots, would you? Like you did? When you sold out our entire fucking planet to him?”_

_King Vegeta turned to face him at that point, his glare deadly even in the dim lighting of the study._

_“I did what I had to to preserve our people, Vegeta,” he snarled. “But of course you would be too short-sighted to see that—you know that if I hadn’t struck an alliance with him—”_

_“Alliance? Allowed a hostile occupation of your own planet, you mean.”_

_King Vegeta looked away._

_“Do you know what the oracles said, when you were born, Vegeta? They said you’d be the Legendary. A Super Saiyan.” Vegeta watched as the King downed the rest of his cup before pausing to look at the empty goblet. “And I was fool enough to believe them.”_

_Vegeta’s tail had unfurled from around his waist by that point, and now he could feel it lashing behind him in sharp, tight coils._

_“I put little stock in prophecy,” Vegeta hissed. “But maybe that was the last sensible counsel anyone’s given you.”_

_The King heaved an exasperated sigh. “Vegeta—”_

_“Are you done?” Vegeta cut in. “Because as illuminating as this heart-to-heart has been, I have other, more pressing things to attend to._

_“Vegeta,” the King repeated, his harsh voice quieter now, creaking with exhaustion. “At least… try and make an effort to come back alive.”_

_But Vegeta had already turned to leave the study._

_“I’ll do whatever needs to be done, father,” was the last thing he said, the coldness in his voice leaving a chill in the room as he left._

 

 

* * *

 

 

By the time Vegeta finished his work on the hull, he was hot and sweating inside the uncomfortable Xlasonian spacesuit. His joints ached, his mouth was dry from the stale, recycled air, and his brow prickled with sweat that he couldn’t wipe away.

But the welding job looked solid, if a little rough around the edges. The scar of the damage was still obvious, the hull now a mishmash of unevenly colored steel, but it didn’t matter if the ship was ugly. All that mattered that it was in one piece.

“Kakarot?” Vegeta said, nudging his scouter on. “Kakarot, are you there?”

“Huh? Yeah?” Kakarot said, as if startled by Vegeta’s voice.

Vegeta rolled his eyes. “I didn’t catch you sleeping on the job, did I?”

“What? No, I—I was just—”

“Listen, I’ve finished patching the hull,” Vegeta cut in. “How is the pressure in the cargo hold?”

“Oh, uh—holding steady, so far. You did good.” Kakarot’s laugh sounded distant over the scouter’s connection, but Vegeta felt strangely grounded by the sound of it just the same. “Not bad handiwork for a royal pain-in-the-ass.”

“Fuck you,” Vegeta said, but found himself smirking behind the insult.

“You coming back in?”

“Yes. Heading for the airlock now.”

Vegeta went radio silent for the time it took him to make it back into the ship, and was thoroughly relieved to re-enter the airlock. He barely waited for the chamber to repressurize before he dropped his tools and began to hastily peel off the layers of his ill-fitting spacesuit, letting the pieces of it drop unceremoniously to the deck. Let Kakarot tidy up the airlock—it was the least he could do after getting to sit pretty on the bridge while Vegeta did all the literal heavy lifting.

By the time Vegeta had finished up washing up in the shower—by himself, having decided that he could probably use the five minutes of uninterrupted alone time for the first time since they had boarded this miserable ship—he was ready to make his way back to the bridge.

But Kakarot wasn’t waiting for him there when he arrived.

 

* * *

 

 

“Son of a bitch,” Vegeta hissed as he rounded the corridor to the brig. “You _were_ sleeping on the job!”

Kakarot jolted up from where he lay on the bunk, quickly pulling off his scouter like it had burned him.

“No!” he said reflexively as Vegeta came towards him, waving a hand in protest. “No—I just—”

“Decided to catch a nap while you let me do all the tedious work?” Vegeta suggested, crossing his arms as he loomed over Kakarot, leaving him no room to escape.

But Kakarot seemed to squirm beneath Vegeta’s glare, looking away as he rubbed the back of his neck—and Vegeta rose an eyebrow when he saw Kakarot’s cheeks begin to redden. Vegeta was expecting an argument, a snappy comeback—he wasn’t accustomed to seeing a cocky blowhard like Kakarot look _embarrassed_.

“I wasn’t sleeping, I was just—” Kakarot lifted his other hand, gesturing with his scouter. “Listening.”

Vegeta blinked, his fury already beginning to deflate.

“Listening?” he said. “To what?”

Vegeta watched as Kakarot turned and rotated his scouter in his hand, his thumb brushing the emerald lens.

“Just… trying to pick up any comm chatter,” Kakarot muttered. “But—there’s nothing out here. I can’t find the frequencies for the nearest PTO networks, and I don’t know how to work the comm systems on the bridge. Nothin’ but static.”

Vegeta felt a small prickling of guilt for his earlier outburst, suddenly understanding.

“You’re looking for news,” he said. “You’re trying to find out what’s been happening out there since Rixshing.

Kakarot was silent for several moments, but nodded. “Yeah.”

Vegeta sighed as he stepped aside, finally opting to take seat next to Kakarot on the bunk.

“You didn’t have to hide down here to do that,” Vegeta said.

Kakarot shrugged.

“What I wouldn’t do just to send one message back to my squad,” he murmured, more to himself than to Vegeta. “To my family. Just to let them know I’m okay. Assuming… they’re even still alive.”

“You know we can’t do that, Kakarot,” Vegeta said, wincing. “Doing that would give away our position, our advantage—it would compromise everything we’re trying to do.”

Kakarot set his scouter aside. “I know that. I just—I can’t stop thinking about them—” There was a tremor in Kakarot’s voice as the words spilled out. “They could all be dead, and I don’t know. If only I could just know—instead of torturing myself with the worst possible scenarios—Soli, it’s just—”

Vegeta could hear Kakarot’s voice hitching, and turned to face him. He reached out with one hand, his fingers finding Kakarot’s wrist.

“Kakarot—”

“As far as I know, you’re all I have left, Vegeta.” There was a long silence before Kakarot could meet Vegeta’s gaze. “How fucked up is that?”

Kakarot’s mouth was set in a bitter grin, but his eyes gleamed bright in the dark. Vegeta immediately felt the pain he saw reflected in Kakarot’s gaze, could feel it stinging just as deeply as if it were his own—and in some ways, it was. Vegeta opened his mouth, as if to tell Kakarot that he knew what he meant—that he had no one else left, either. That maybe he had never had anyone else to begin with. No family to mourn him, no comrades to miss him—not really.

But Vegeta said nothing. Instead he slid a hand to the back of Kakarot’s neck, his fingers sliding between the spikes of his hair. Before Kakarot could try to shrug off his touch, Vegeta pulled his face toward his own, and pressed their lips together.

Vegeta felt Kakarot stiffen for a moment before allowing himself the release—Vegeta shuddered as he felt Kakarot slowly sink into the kiss, his stiff muscles slackening as his body melted against Vegeta’s. One of his hands found the side of Vegeta’s face, a rough palm cupping Vegeta’s cheek as his tongue parted Vegeta’s lips.

Vegeta barely managed to surface for air before Kakarot had him suddenly pinned to the bunk, his hands sliding hungrily against Vegeta’s body. His mouth was rough against Vegeta’s lips before moving to his jaw, then down his neck, finally pressing bruising kisses against Vegeta’s throat. Vegeta’s hands reached instinctively for Kakarot’s armor—he rushed to peel away the layers separating them, his hands working to strip Kakarot down until he could feel the heat of Kakarot’s need beneath his own fingertips.

Kakarot’s hands tore at Vegeta just as frantically, panting and growling until he had Vegeta stripped naked beneath him. Vegeta felt suddenly exposed to him in a way he hadn’t before, and he tried to pull Kakarot towards himself—but Kakarot was pulling away. Vegeta watched him struggle with a packet of lubricant—a pilfered token taken from the well-stocked medbay—before opting to tear it open with his teeth. He worked quickly to slick himself with it, and Vegeta reached out to help him, his hand fumbling over Kakarot’s, forcing a deep groan from Kakarot’s throat as he stroked Kakarot’s length. Vegeta shivered, already hard and aching just from the frantic moments that had brought them to this point, and his hands moved to wrap around Kakarot’s back, his nails digging into Kakarot’s shoulders.

“Kakarot,” he panted as Kakarot’s weight finally settled over him, crushing their bodies closer together, the desperation building between them until it was almost too much to bear.

It was a breathless relief when Kakarot finally pushed inside of Vegeta.

Vegeta hissed at the feeling, savouring the burn as Kakarot filled him—he hadn’t realized how badly he had needed Kakarot inside of him again, and he arched his back, bracing himself for the hard release they both sorely needed—

But instead, Kakarot’s hips moved slowly, deeply, his breath hot and ragged against Vegeta’s throat with every hard, drawn-out stroke. Vegeta moaned at the torment of it, and his legs wrapped tight around Kakarot’s hips, trying to draw him in closer.

“Gods, Vegeta,” Kakarot rasped, his voice cracking as Vegeta’s nails raked hot, stinging clawmarks down his back, and Vegeta felt Kakarot’s tail suddenly reaching out for his, coiling around it, the intimate sliding of fur against fur setting every one of Vegeta’s nerves alight.

“Vegeta,” Kakarot rasped again, his voice bordering on outright begging, and suddenly his hand was on Vegeta’s cheek, his thumb brushing across Vegeta’s lip—Vegeta kissed at his skin, savouring the taste of Kakarot against his tongue—

Kakarot shuddered on top of him, gasping, and for a brief, searing moment, their eyes met in the darkness. Vegeta felt suddenly like he had been wounded, something opening so wide in his chest that it left him raw and aching until it hurt to breathe. A dark, nameless fever burned between them, leaving them shaking as they moved against one another, and Vegeta didn’t have the chance to catch his breath before Kakarot smothered him beneath a rough kiss.

Vegeta came first, crying out only to have his voice silenced by Kakarot’s hungry mouth. Kakarot’s pace quickened then, until he chased Vegeta’s climax with his own, his moans quiet and strangled as he buried his face against Vegeta’s neck.

It was a long while before either of them moved, but Kakarot made no rush to separate from Vegeta. Instead, he laid his head on Vegeta’s chest, and his tail continued to coil slow and loose against Vegeta’s

“Thank you,” Kakarot eventually whispered against him before taking in a slow, shuddering breath.

“For what?” Vegeta asked, his voice thick and heavy as he pulled his fingers through the tangles of Kakarot’s hair.

But Kakarot didn’t have to explain. And Vegeta didn’t want him to—whatever had just passed between them, Vegeta wasn’t prepared to put a name to.

It was a relief when Kakarot simply kissed him instead.

 

* * *

 


	11. Chapter 11

_  
“Arisad! ARISAD!”_

_Ulle’s cry cut through the battle clamor. Kakarot twisted wildly back from a Rixshian swing, planting a ki blast through a second Rixshian attacking him from behind. After her first frantic scream Ulle fell silent, and Kakarot desperately wanted to reach his squad mates. Without being gutted on the way by the fucking Rixshian army. For every three he took down, five more poured from the jagged gloom. The air reeked of blood and guts.  
_

A line of heat pressed against the front of Kakarot’s body, a tight grip circling his wrist.

__  
A ki blast scored Kakarot’s stomach, and he yelled and returned fire. More Rixshians piled him, grabbing his limbs, trapping his wrists. He wouldn’t make it to Ulle and Arisad in time. Kakarot wouldn’t be able to evacuate his squad before the ship blew, fuck, that poor kid Turniz —  


Cold sweat drenched his back as Kakarot woke gasping. Vegeta growled and tightened his grip on Kakarot’s wrist, pressing himself more firmly back against Kakarot’s stomach on the narrow bunk. The room was still too cold and Kakarot couldn’t stop shivering despite Vegeta’s heat. Fucking hell. He couldn’t afford to loose it like this.

Staring at the greyish light on opposite wall, Kakarot clenched his teeth and hoped Vegeta kept sleeping.

* * *

The shrieking whistle was splitting Kakarot’s head in half. 

“Xlasonians. Useless race,” Vegeta hissed, attempting to glare the water-boiler into silence. Kakarot felt a knot of tension ease in his chest, allowed his lips to curve upward for the first time in hours.

“The ship doesn’t care if you insult it, Vegeta.”

The counter dented under Vegeta’s fist. Kakarot turned away to hide his smile. 

A rumble split the air. Kakarot winced and placed a hand over his complaining stomach. It would be nearly two full cycles til they reached Quioaseq. Once there, they could hunt the local fauna through the deep forests until their hunger was finally sated. Until then, they had only a slightly flavorful mineral to boil in a weak approximation of Poletchi, the smoky liquid Saiyans drank hot with breakfast. 

Vegeta turned from the screaming boiler and started slamming kitchen surfaces apparently at random. Kakarot winced. “Are you trying to team up with that damn thing to split my head open, Vegeta?”

“Fridge,” Vegeta replied shortly.

“What?”

“We need somewhere to store the goddam meat, Kakarot,” Vegeta slammed his palm into the wall at head height, tail lashing behind him in uneven sweeps. Kakarot realized Vegeta looked slightly unsteady, tipping his forehead toward the wall. It had been too dammed long since either of them had eaten. 

“I’ll help you look,” Kakarot moved forward, gritting his teeth now against the boiler’s noise. The Xlasonians didn’t put handles on their doors, but instead used some kind of pressure mechanism. Even after exploring the eye-hurtingly white surfaces of the kitchen several times, they kept finding new openings when they leaned in different places. Hopefully a more systematic search really would turn up a fridge, because Soli knew they would need some way to store the meat if they wanted to make it to Earth.

* * *

Kakarot drummed his fingers on the bridge console. Careful not to hit the buttons, fuck knows what half of those did. Vegeta was taking his sweet time setting the self destruct sequence on the Saiyan pod. Damn PTO trackers. 

Why wasn’t he back yet?

Kakarot shifted his weight to the side, shifted back. Glanced toward the space ports. Too small on this side of the ship, he wouldn’t see anything. He could have gone with Vegeta and watched from the cargo bay windows. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to.

The cargo ship felt suffocatingly small.

* * *

The green bulk of Quioaseq loomed. Kakarot watched Vegeta’s intent face catch the bluish glow from the console, jaw tense. If their repair job had failed, the hull would tear open in the planet’s atmosphere. Kakarot stared at the lumpy green growing closer. They couldn’t afford for the ship to give now.

Vegeta’s hands, still ungloved, shook slightly where he braced them on the console. Kakarot pushed away the urge to reach out and steady them with his own grip.

Kakarot thought he’d be used to waiting after how much of his damned life he’d spent cooling his heels in landing pods, but time seemed to expand as they slowly gained on Quioaseq’s surface. He’d become so intent on the waiting that he jolted when the landing gear clanked down. Vegeta released his breath in a gust and slumped backward. Kakarot moved toward Vegeta’s chair, curling his tail around Vegeta’s wrist in silent reassurance. Vegeta’s shoulders were tense under Kakarot’s hands, and he rubbed his thumbs in circles across the fabric of Vegeta’s battlesuit.

* * *

Kakarot’s mouth filled with the hot tang of blood. His muscles trembled with the effort to restrain himself to bite-sized pieces. His chin and hands dripped red as he pulled glorious morsels from the dead prey animal. He kept having to remind himself to pause long enough to breathe.

Across the carcass from him, Vegeta was no more decorous, liberally smeared with the blood of their fresh kill. The sight stirred something primal deep in Kakarot’s belly, but he pushed it aside in favor of eating. He’d had an eternity on that damned ship with Vegeta but no food. For now, the kill took precedence. 

Vegeta looked up from their downed prey, pointed canines showing in a predatory grin as he locked Kakarot in place with a glance. The orange sun picked out Auburn highlights in his hair. Kakarot swallowed hard.

When Kakarot next looked up from eating, Vegeta’s eyes flicked toward Kakarot before, very deliberately, he licked blood off one finger. Then more of his hand. Kakarot was trapped by the motion, breath coming harder than before. Vegeta met his eyes, smirked, then returned to his meal.

Kakarot wanted to leap across the carcass, pin Vegeta down by his throat, and fuck him into the ground.

* * *

Orange sunlight glanced off the pool’s surface, and Kakarot sighed and slid further down into the water. After the dry sameness of the spaceship, the chill felt good against his skin. Water splashed at Kakarot’s left, and he let his eyes linger on Vegeta’s ass as the prince pulled himself out the water. Licked his lips at the view once Vegeta was standing upright on the bank. Kakarot knew just how good that skin tasted.

Vegeta’s tail curved near his knees in a relaxed sweep, and he grinned as he noticed Kakarot’s attention. “Hungry for more already, Kakarot?”

“Always,” Kakarot responded easily, then frowned as Vegeta’s tail twitched and his expression tightened. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re a sap,” snapped Vegeta, stalking away. Kakarot sighed and thunked his head back against the pool’s edge. Same old Vegeta.

* * *

_  
“Here, Kakarot,” his mother’s voice was soft and confident, “slice here along the membrane, and you’ll get a nice tender steak.”_

_Kakarot nodded solemnly, guiding the knife where his mother had indicated. Even though he was only small, she was teaching him since he’d asked. He’d do a good job. The cut of meat fell free._

_“Perfect!” she exclaimed, then looked at Kakarot and burst out laughing. “I think you take my work more seriously than I do!” She ruffled his hair, and Kakarot smiled and leaned against her._

__

Kakarot’s ki blade sliced cleanly, and the slab of meat dropped to the plastic sheet placed below. The six limbed carcass of the herbivore was now completely stripped of cuts worth taking. Quioaseq’s sun was dipping low on the horizon, throwing long shadows across the field that had become their makeshift butchery. Kakarot grinned at the spread of stripped bones. They wouldn’t have to worry about food for a good long time. Hunting had been a damned welcome change from sitting around on their ship.

“About damn time.” Kakarot had missed Vegeta’s silent approach through the iron scented air. He turned to face Vegeta, still satisfied with the day’s work.

“We had to do it right, Vegeta, or it’d spoil faster,” Kakarot let his lips curve, “just because you don’t know how to do something doesn’t mean it’s pointless.”

Vegeta huffed and turned away, arms tightly crossed. He’d been sulking all day, after Kakarot snapped at him for cutting the meat wrong. Gathering edible plants for their journey hadn’t improved his mood any. He seemed to think he’d got the worse job,

“Give me a hand carrying all this back?” Kakarot ignored the glare Vegeta leveled, focusing instead on wrapping the latest butchered meat securely. He glanced back at Vegeta, who remained silent and scowling. Kakarot shrugged and lifted into the air without him.

Their ship was nearby. As Karaot carried his load toward the kitchen, he heard a soft thunk from Vegeta landing. In the kitchen, Kakarot smacked one of the surfaces they’d finally identified as a fridge. Something eased in his chest as he placed their new rations into the chilled space, finally free from the threat of starvation for a while. Behind him, he heard Vegeta smacking another space open. Probably a freezer.

Kakarot turned and caught relief momentarily smoothing Vegeta’s face. The time without food had left them both tense. Vegeta caught his gaze, frowned again, then left to bring in more of their rations.

* * *

Vegeta’s ki sizzled through the air and found it’s target, filling the kitchen with the smell of charred flesh.

“What the hell, Vegeta?” Kakarot stared at the now burnt steak. It was coated in a black layer. “That smelled a hell of a lot better before.”

Vegeta glared at him, lips drawing back in a silent snarl. Kakarot’s gaze fell to Vegeta’s hands, balled tightly into fists and clenched at his sides. “Well, hey. Still good to eat. And we’ve got plenty more.”

He expected Vegeta to spit out an insult, his usual response to anyone hinting he’d done something less than perfectly. But Vegeta just nodded tightly, lips now pressed into a grim line, and slid onto one of the rounded stools next to the slab of table jutting from the ship’s white walls. Kakarot frowned, then shifted their burnt dinner to the table, along with two of the knives they’d found. 

“What’s eating you?” Kakarot eased onto his own slippery seat, then leaned forward to brace his weight on his forearms against the table. “You can’t be this mad about the food.”

“Fucking Xlasonians,” Vegeta hissed, staring at his own hands clenched tight on the table, “do they just eat everything fucking raw?”

“I don’t think cooking would do much for a rock, Vegeta,” Kakarot eyed the tension in Vegeta’s hunched shoulders, “but there’s no way this is just about the ship not having a stove.”

The tightening in Vegeta’s jaw was visible even from across the table. Kakarot sighed, reached out to place a hand on Vegeta’s forearm. 

Vegeta refused to look up and meet his eyes for a long moment. Then he inhaled deeply, and as he let out his breath Kakarot felt the muscles in Vegeta’s arm relax slightly.

When he finally stopped staring at the table and met Kakarot’s eyes, Vegeta still hesitated before he spoke.

“Our next stop is Earth.”

Kakarot frowned. “That’s always been the plan.”

Vegeta bared his teeth. “Yes it’s the fucking _plan_ Kakarot, but _what if it doesn’t work_.”

Kakarot blew his breath out in a gust. That made sense. If these dragon balls turned out to be garbage, they’d made the journey for nothing. And Frieza would eventually find them and kill them. Probably painfully and publicly, as an example. And even if he didn’t, their desperate hope of saving their race from extinct through sheer callous waste, that hope would be gone.

“Well,” Kakarot squeezed Vegeta’s arm, showed his teeth in a dark grin, “we’ll find out when we get there.”


End file.
